From the streets of the Cuban capital, a defiant message has emerged after US federal prosecutors indicted former president Raúl Castro for the 1996 downing of two civilian planes — with residents rejecting the charges as hypocritical, dismissing the need for outside intervention, and warning that Washington’s real aim may be to justify military aggression.
The indictment, unsealed on Wednesday, accuses Raúl Castro — Cuba’s defense minister at the time — of murder and destruction of aircraft over the 24 February 1996 shootdown of two small planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Four men aboard were killed.
But in Havana, 61-year-old state worker Rolando Mesa was unimpressed: “Ah, but nobody prosecutes US President Donald Trump. And besides, take the shooting down of those planes, for example. If it had been the other way around, if Cuba had sent those planes into the United States and we flew into Miami, what would happen? They’d shoot us down like clay pigeons with the Patriots. So, what are we talking about?”
‘I don’t think it’s necessary to prosecute a single individual for Cuba to change’
Homemaker Debrezei Barreras, 43, questioned whether targeting one man would yield any political shift:
