The indictment announced this week by the United States against former Cuban president Raúl Castro is the latest episode in the pressure campaign that the Trump administration has waged for months against the island's communist government. Castro was charged over his alleged role in the 1996 downing of two light aircraft operated by the Miami-based group Brothers to the Rescue. At the time, Castro was defence minister, while his brother, Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution and the dominant figure in the island's politics for more than half a century, was running the country as president.
Today, at 94, Raúl Castro remains a central figure within Cuba's power structure, even after formally stepping back from front-line politics. The younger brother of Fidel Castro, the pair led the revolution that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and put in place the system that still governs the island.
Who is Raúl Castro?
The Castro brothers were born in Birán, in eastern Cuba, the sons of a Galician landowner who had emigrated to the island. Fidel Castro quickly became the political and ideological face of the revolutionary movement, while Raúl Castro from early on took on a more military and organisational role. Both took part in the 1953 attack on the Moncada barracks, a failed attempt at an uprising against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista that ended with their arrest and subsequent exile in Mexico.
