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Admin Preps to Seek Castro Indictment 05/20 06:14
MIAMI (AP) -- The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment
against former Cuban President Ral Castro, three people familiar with the
matter told The Associated Press on Friday, as President Donald Trump threatens
possible military action against the communist-run island.
One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to
Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two planes operated by the
Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro was defense minister at
the time.
All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't
authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not
respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was
reported earlier by CBS.
Any criminal charge against Castro, which would need to be approved by a
grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana and ramp up
expectations of U.S. military action in Cuba like the one carried out in
January in Venezuela to bring President Nicols Maduro to New York on drug
trafficking charges.
Following Maduro's ouster, the Trump administration quickly turned its
attention to his ally Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that choked off
fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and a
collapse in economic activity across the island.
Iran war gave Cuba a breather
The U.S. war in Iran appeared to have given Cuban leaders something of a
reprieve from U.S. talk of regime change.
As Trump seeks to wind down that conflict, speculation has been growing that
he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba after pledging earlier this year a
"friendly takeover" of the country if its leadership didn't open up its economy
to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.
Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the
University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will
play well with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade career war
planners in the Pentagon to pursue a second war of choice -- this time just 90
miles from Florida.
"There's no easy Venezuela copy," said Feinberg. "There's no clear line of
succession and it's hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the
ground."
The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a
special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases
against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to
reopen its investigation into Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown.
Trump calls Cuba 'a declining country'
Trump declined to discuss a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the
Justice Department.
"But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country --
they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we're going to see," Trump
told reporters aboard Air Force One. "We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but
not maybe for today."
CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro's
grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.
Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in
2006, and then handed power to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Daz-Canel, in
2018.
While he largely has avoided the spotlight since retiring in 2021 as head of
the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the
scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Ral Guillermo
Rodrguez Castro, who previously met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State
Marco Rubio.
Florida straits shootdown a watershed moment in Cuba-U.S. relations
Cuba's shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna aircraft operated by the Brothers to
the Rescue was a watershed moment in decades of hostilities between the two
countries.
At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to
reduce tensions with a Cold War adversary but faced stiff opposition from
exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro
leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing economic deprivation and
single-party rule.
The Cubans had warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to
defend against what it considered deliberate provocations. But those calls went
unheeded and on Feb. 24, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter
jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba's airspace,
according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation
Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization's leader, narrowly
escaped.
"With hindsight, it appears the Castros' motive was to slow down the Clinton
outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their
national security posture," said Richard Fienberg, who worked on Cuban issues
at the National Security Council at the time.
They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, said Feinberg.
Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed what became known as the
Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and made
it far more complicated for successive U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba.
To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single person of conspiracy to commit
murder in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo
Hernndez, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the
1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but was released by President Barack
Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as part of an attempt to normalize
relations with Cuba.
Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted
but are outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba.
Castro previously investigated for drug trafficking
Castro has been under U.S. criminal investigation before. In 1993, federal
prosecutors in Miami considered charging him and several other senior Cuban
military officials with cocaine trafficking based on testimony from Colombian
traffickers that emerged in the drug trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel
Noriega, the AP reported in 2006.
But an indictment never followed amid concerns about the witness'
credibility as well as fears that it could risk U.S. intelligence operations
and derail Clinton's tentative outreach.
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