On May 20 the U.S. Justice Department filed charges against Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five Cuban pilots for murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and destruction of U.S. civilian aircraft. The case revolves around a 1996 downing of two planes belonging to the counterrevolutionary group Brothers to the Rescue.
The indictment, handed down by a grand jury in Miami nearly a month earlier, was kept sealed to be announced on Cuba’s “Independence Day,” as the U.S. rulers mark a new stage in their economic, political and military moves against the Cuban government and people. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a “Message to the Cuban People” that day, in which he offered “a new path between the U.S. and a new Cuba.” One in which “ordinary” Cubans “can own” a gas station, a bank, a television station, he said. He offers a Cuba where capitalism with its exploitation and oppression once again reigns supreme.
The announcement coincided with the arrival of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its battle group in the Caribbean. Over the past months, the U.S. military has also ramped up intelligence gathering flights off the coast of Cuba. And to build up its claim that Cuba represents an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” U.S. media outlets have leaked so-called classified intelligence about Havana furtively acquiring 300 drones.
These moves — alongside the ongoing strangulation of Cuba’s economy with a total oil blockade — are part of Washington’s drive to keep the Cuban government and people on edge, hoping it will force them to accept the U.S. rulers’ conditions as initial talks between the two governments unfold.
In response, some 250,000 Cubans rallied in Havana May 22 to condemn the indictment of Raúl Castro, and to send a message that the Cuban people are ready to defend their sovereignty and socialist revolution.
Raúl Castro sent a message to the rally, “telling us that he is deeply grateful for the solidarity of our people and around the world, and assuring us that as long as he lives, he will continue to lead our people, defending the revolution with one foot in the stirrup,” Gerardo Hernández, national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, told the crowd. Hernández was one of the Cuban 5, who came to the U.S. in the 1990s to identify and prevent violent attacks on Cuba by counterrevolutionaries operating here.
Baseless and dangerous charges
On Feb. 24, 1996, Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) shot down two of three Cessna aircraft flown by Brothers to the Rescue pilots who, despite several unambiguous warnings by Cuban air traffic controllers, invaded Cuban airspace on a course toward Havana.
The U.S. government accuses Raúl Castro, then minister of defense and head of the FAR, with authorizing and overseeing “a military chain of command that ended with Cuban fighter jets firing air-to-air missiles at civilian aircrafts over international waters.” Those missiles “destroyed the planes without warning and killed all aboard,” claimed Jason Reding, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, at a press conference in Miami.
The Cuban government called the accusations a “despicable” political manipulation of the incident. The U.S. government “distorts the historical truths.”
Cuban leaders documented the real facts — as they did when it happened.
A record of violations
This invasion of Cuban airspace was the second hostile incursion that day, and the 10th such violation of Cuban territory over the previous 20 months. The group was led by well-known Cuban American counterrevolutionary José Basulto, who has a long history of participating in armed activities against Cuba dating back to his participation in the failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion organized by the CIA.
Founded in 1991, Brothers to the Rescue made a name for itself — and a fortune through fundraising — as a so-called humanitarian outfit carrying out “search-and-rescue” flights to help Cubans on rafts toward Florida. At the time, the number of Cubans seeking to come to the United States had reached more than 1,000 a day, as Cuba was hit by an economic crisis precipitated by the sudden cutoff of trade as the Soviet Union imploded.
In 1994, the Bill Clinton administration decided to bar automatic entry to Cubans who reached the U.S., and instead sent them to the U.S. Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The rising tide of rafters receded after that. Without that as cover, Brothers to the Rescue started its deeper incursions into Cuban airspace, dropping leaflets and other propaganda over Havana seeking to spur an uprising.
Hoping to take advantage of the economic crisis in Cuba, counterrevolutionary groups based in Florida organized attacks against Cuba, including bombing hotels, in conjunction with Washington’s meddling.
Over the year preceding the shoot down Havana had sent 16 diplomatic notes to the State Department requesting action to stop these violations of Cuban territory, to no avail.
Declassified U.S. records back Cuba
Documents recently declassified by the National Security Archive detail these exchanges.
As far back as August 1995, according to a Federal Aviation Administration memorandum to Basulto, the Cuban government had “asserted its firm determination to take actions necessary to defend Cuban territorial sovereignty,” warning that “any boats from abroad can be sunk and any aircraft downed.”
One month before the Feb. 24 fatal incident, an FAA official commented on a State Department memo about a Jan. 20 Brothers to the Rescue incursion. “This latest overflight can only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban government,” it said. “Worst case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row.”
The Department of Justice claims Castro and others named in the indictment were part of a deliberate “conspiracy” involving Cuban “agents” who informed Havana about Brothers to the Rescue plans, including its Feb. 24 flight plans, which according to U.S. officials were used to ambush the planes. (See article page 8 on the Cuban Five.)
The indictment fails to mention, however, that this group had filed a flight plan with U.S. aviation authorities, as required, which they didn’t follow.
Cuban authorities, using proper aviation channels, declared the airspace south of the 24th parallel an active danger zone on Feb. 24. An FAA chronology included in the declassified papers documents the exchanges between Brothers to the Rescue pilots and Havana’s air traffic control.
Be advised that “the zone north of Havana is active. You run danger by penetrating that side of the 24th,” said Havana air traffic control to the three approaching planes. “We are aware that we are in danger each time we cross the area to the south of the 24th. But we are willing to do it as free Cubans,” responded Basulto.
His reckless acts were responsible for the death of the four crew members, said René González, a Cuban revolutionary who had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue to inform the Cuban government of its activities. Basulto would publicly mock the Cuban air force for not “having the means, or even fuel” to fly its MiGs, he said. González described how Brothers to the Rescue brought along news crews on its flights. In July 1995, a Miami TV news station crew videotaped the aircraft flying over Havana.
Part of the U.S. rulers’ slander campaign against Cuba is calling the Brothers to the Rescue planes “civilian unarmed aircraft.” But there is a long history of U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary forces using “civilian” planes and boats to carry out terrorist attacks on Cuban territory dating back to the first years of the Cuban Revolution. They set off incendiary bombs over sugarcane fields, fired cannons from offshore gunboats at the Havana shoreline and dropped weapons to terrorists on the island. The “civilian” Miami Opa-locka airport from which Brothers to the Rescue operated had been used as a base for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
“Cuba’s action at the time, with a big display of patience and tolerance, exercised its right to protect its airspace and the peace of the Cuban people,” Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Relations Carlos Fernández de Cossío told Cuban TV May 20.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez told ABC News in Havana May 7 that the Cuban leadership takes President Trump’s threats “very seriously” and Cuba will “exercise its right of legitimate self-defense” if attacked militarily. He said the U.S. government is on a dangerous path that “could lead to unimaginable consequences” that could result in the “loss of Cuban and young American lives” and a bloodbath in Cuba.