In a room filled with both grief and joy, the Department of Justice announced the indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro before hundreds from Miami’s Cuban exile community at the Freedom Tower on May 20.
Castro and five other defendants were charged by a Miami grand jury on April 23 for the downing of two planes piloted by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996.
“My message today is clear: the United States and President Trump do not and will not forget its citizens,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at the conference, which fell on Cuban Independence Day. “If you kill Americans we will pursue you… no matter how much time has passed.”
Florida Senator Ashley Moody, Southern District of Florida Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia and Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega also gave remarks.
“There’s been a lack of political will to bring Raúl Castro and those responsible for the shoot-down,” said Richard Tapia, a political science professor at MDC whose parents fled the island in 1968. “I think within the last two years we’ve seen the political will emerge.”
Who were the Brothers to the Rescue?
Brothers to the Rescue was a Miami-based humanitarian organization led by José Basulto, a CIA-trained exile who took part in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
They conducted aerial missions across the Florida Straits to assist and help rescue more than 4,200 stranded rafters fleeing Cuba in the 1990s, according to a Brothers to the Rescue archive at the University of Miami.
During the flights, the Cuban Government accused Basulto of entering their airspace multiple times. Federal Aviation Administration agents warned Basulto against further provocation, fearing it would escalate tensions.
In their last mission on Feb. 24, 1996, three BTTR Cessna planes flew south of the 24th parallel, an area a fair distance away from Cuba’s 12-mile territorial waters.
Cuban fighter jets destroyed two of the aircrafts mid-air, killing all four pilots.
“We left full of hope…and we returned loaded with pain in our hearts,” said Sylvia Iriondo, a Cuban exile who was processed through the Freedom Tower in 1960. Iriondo was in the only plane that survived the shoot-down. She was with her husband, Arnaldo Iglesias and Basulto.
Investigations conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) deemed the actions surrounding the incident a violation of international law. The planes’ occupants were unarmed.
Miriam de la Peña, the mother of Mario de la Peña, one of the four pilots killed, said the indictment is a step toward the justice she has been demanding for 30 years.
Mario, who was at 24 when the mission took place, was the youngest pilot on the team.
“[People] used to ask Mario: why are you doing this? And he would say: ‘If I don’t, who’s going to do it?’” de la Peña recalled.
After Mario graduated from Miami Dade College’s aviation school and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the early 1990s, he volunteered with Brothers to the Rescue.
“This is not going to bring back our loved ones, but it’s a sense of relief knowing that the person that ordered the killing is now a fugitive and could possibly and hopefully be extradited and face justice,” de la Peña said.
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