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The United States has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals in connection with the 1996 downing of two civilian planes. The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, revives charges originally filed in 2003 regarding the attack on aircraft belonging to the "Brothers to the Rescue" group. Four people were killed in the incident, including three Americans. Castro, now 94, was the head of Cuba’s armed forces at the time of the shoot-down.
As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba's communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges "a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation".
Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
"The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens," Blanche said.
The justice department's new charges take aim at a key figurehead of Cuba's communist leadership when it is facing intense US pressure to make significant political and economic reforms to its one-party rule there.
Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a message to the Cuban people timed to the country's independence day.
"President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba," Rubio said.
Rubio told citizens of the island that a Cuban military-run conglomerate known as GAESA is primarily responsible for the blackouts and food shortages that the country continues to endure.
GAESA owns or operates most of the lucrative parts of the Cuban economy from the ports to the petrol pumps to 5-star hotels.
In response to Rubio's message, Díaz-Canel accused the US of lying and imposing a collective punishment on the Cuban people.
Díaz-Canel also said that the indictment of Castro was being used to "justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba" and accused the US of distorting the facts around the downing of the plane.
He claimed that Cuba acted in "legitimate self-defence within its jurisdictional waters".
Nearly 95 years old, Castro remains an influential figure, acknowledged on the island as the surviving "leader of the Cuban Revolution".
