U.S. Indicts Raúl Castro as Military Pressure on Cuba Intensifies

(MENAFN) The US Justice Department has formally indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro, escalating Washington's campaign against Havana months after President Donald Trump warned that Cuba would be "next" following Washington's regime-change operation against Venezuela.

Handed down Wednesday — shortly before a commemorative ceremony in Miami marking the incident — the widely anticipated indictment charges the 94-year-old Castro and five of his former officials with conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder stemming from the 1996 shootdown of two planes operated by anti-communist Cuban exiles off the island's coast. Havana has long maintained that the aircraft were linked to the US Air Force and had been warned to divert before being fired upon.

In a statement Wednesday, Trump declared that "America will not tolerate a rogue state harboring hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations just ninety miles from the American homeland."

The legal action arrives against a backdrop of rapidly mounting military pressure. The Pentagon announced the same day that the USS Nimitz carrier strike group had entered the Caribbean — a deployment that drew immediate comparisons to the military buildup that preceded the operation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was indicted by the Justice Department before US special forces seized him in a raid on his Caracas residence in January.

Tensions were further inflamed earlier this week when US intelligence officials told Axios that Cuba had acquired more than 300 military drones, allegedly in preparation for strikes on the US base at Guantanamo Bay and targets as distant as Key West, Florida. Havana dismissed the allegations outright, accusing Washington of manufacturing a "fraudulent case" for military intervention.

Trump tightened the screws on Cuba earlier this year, imposing a near-total energy blockade following Maduro's abduction and explicitly declaring Cuba his next regime-change target. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has echoed those threats repeatedly throughout the year.

In a Spanish-language video released Wednesday to mark Cuba's 124th anniversary of independence from Spain, Rubio pledged $100 million in aid to Cuba — contingent on distribution through "the Catholic church or other trusted charitable groups" — and offered to assist in building "a new Cuba," a formulation widely interpreted as a reference to a post-government transition.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez dismissed the overture, branding Rubio a "mouthpiece of corrupt and vengeful interests" — a pointed reference to anti-communist exile communities "concentrated in South Florida."

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has warned that any military assault on his country would trigger "a bloodbath with incalculable consequences" for the US, and insisted in a social media post Monday that Cuba "poses no threat" and harbors no "aggressive plans or intentions against any country."

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