Florida drops hammer on Raúl Castro: Indicted for killing 4 U.S. citizens in 1996 attack
Florida – Florida’s top law enforcement officials are moving forward with a new prosecution effort tied to one of the most painful chapters in the state’s Cuban exile history: the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft over international waters.
Attorney General James Uthmeier joined Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia, and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida to announce the indictment of Raúl Castro in connection with the deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue volunteers: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
The announcement places the case back in the public spotlight nearly three decades after the fatal attack.
For families, supporters, and the broader South Florida community, the incident has long stood as a wound that never fully closed.
Now, Florida officials say the effort to pursue accountability is being revived through a partnership between state prosecutors and federal authorities.
“On February 24, 1996, Raúl Castro and his criminal gang murdered Americans and our fellow Floridians,” said Attorney General James Uthmeier.
“Upon taking office in 2025, I directed our Statewide Prosecutors to reopen a previously closed case file on Raúl Castro. Working hand-in-hand with United States Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones and his team at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, accountability starts here, in Florida, with this indictment.”
According to the indictment, Castro, who was then serving as Minister of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, authorized and oversaw a military command structure that led to Cuban fighter jets firing air-to-air missiles at civilian aircraft.
The aircraft, operated by Brothers to the Rescue, were not military planes. They were unarmed U.S. civilian aircraft.
The volunteers had departed from Opa-Locka Airport in Miami-Dade County on February 24, 1996. Three aircraft took off that day. Two never returned.
Officials say MiG fighter jets operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force destroyed two of the planes, killing four United States nationals, including three United States citizens.
The aircraft were outside Cuban territory at the time, flying over international waters and traveling away from Cuba, according to the indictment.
The third aircraft was also followed after the first two were shot down, but it managed to escape.
The indictment says the Cuban military gave no warning before the destruction of the two aircraft, despite contact involving the Havana air traffic control tower.
That detail remains central to the case. Prosecutors are presenting the deaths not as the result of confusion or a border incident, but as the outcome of a military action carried out against civilian planes beyond Cuban territory.
The allegations also reach into Florida itself. As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors say Castro and the Communist Cuban regime violated Florida’s sovereignty through spies operating in at least the Eleventh and Sixteenth Judicial Circuits. Those spies allegedly supplied intelligence that helped place the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in the path of Cuban MiG-29s.
That point gives the case a direct Florida connection beyond the victims and the airport where the flights began. According to the state’s position, the alleged conspiracy touched Florida soil before the aircraft were ever intercepted over the water.
The prosecution will proceed under the authority of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, working in partnership with the Office of Statewide Prosecution. The structure brings together federal power and state-level involvement in a case that Florida officials say begins with Floridians, Florida airfields, and alleged intelligence activity inside Florida’s courts and communities.
For Uthmeier, the indictment is being framed as the start of a renewed legal push, not the closing word on a decades-old tragedy. The case reaches back to 1996, but the message from state officials is aimed squarely at the present: a previously closed file has been reopened, a partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice is now active, and the deaths of Costa, Alejandre, de la Peña, and Morales are again at the center of a criminal prosecution effort.
Nearly 30 years after the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were destroyed, Florida is now placing the case before the justice system once more.
