By Jana Winter
May 20 (Reuters) – Former Cuban President Raul Castro has been indicted in the United States, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters on Wednesday, in a move that marks an escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against the Caribbean island’s communist government.
Cuba’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The indictment comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for a regime change in Cuba, where Castro’s communists have been in charge since his late brother Fidel Castro led a revolution in 1959.
“America will not tolerate a rogue state harboring hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations just ninety miles from the American homeland,” Trump said in a statement earlier on Wednesday.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Monday that the island does not represent a threat.
PLANES INCIDENT
The charges against Raul Castro, 94, are expected to be based on a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down planes operated by a group of Cuban exiles, a U.S. Justice Department official told Reuters last week on the condition of anonymity.
The Miami U.S. Attorney’s office is planning to host an event starting at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) to honor victims of the incident. The Justice Department said on Tuesday it would make an announcement in conjunction with the ceremony, but did not provide details about the announcement.
The U.S. has effectively imposed a blockade on Cuba by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and exacerbating its worse crisis in decades.
In a video message addressed to the Cuban people on Wednesday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents were Cuban immigrants to the United States, offered to forge a new relationship between the two countries. He said the U.S. could provide $100 million in aid, and blamed Cuba’s leaders for shortages of electricity, food and fuel.
Speaking in Spanish, Rubio said the food and medicine must be distributed by the Catholic Church or other trusted charitable groups.
In response, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Rubio “the mouthpiece of corrupt and vengeful interests” but did not rule out accepting the aid.
“He keeps talking about an aid package of 100 million dollars that Cuba has not rejected, but whose cynicism is evident to anyone in light of the devastating effect of the economic blockade and the energy stranglehold,” Rodriguez wrote in a post on X.
Cuba has yet to comment directly on the threat of indictment.
TRUMP SAYS CUBA ‘IS NEXT’
Born in 1931, Raul Castro was a key figure alongside his older brother in the guerrilla war that toppled U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. He helped defeat the U.S.-organized Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
He served as Cuba’s defense minister before assuming the presidency in 2008 after his brother fell ill. Fidel died in 2016.
Raul Castro stepped down from the presidency in 2018 but remains a powerful figure in Cuban politics.
The filing of the criminal case against a U.S. adversary like Castro recalls the earlier drug-trafficking indictment of imprisoned former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an ally of Havana’s.
The Trump administration cited that indictment as a justification for the January 3 raid on Caracas by the U.S. military in which Maduro was captured and brought to New York to face the charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump says Cuba’s communist government is corrupt, and in March threatened that Cuba “is next” after Venezuela.
Diaz-Canel said on Monday that any U.S. military action against Cuba would lead to a “bloodbath.”
(Reporting by Jana Winter in WashingtonAdditional reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff in Washington, Brendan O’Boyle in Mexico City and Michelle Nichols in New YorkWriting by Luc CohenEditing by Noeleen Walder, Nick Zieminski and Rosalba O’Brien)
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