A story about the indictment of Cuban President Raúl Castro, his history, normalization of relations with the US, the shootdown of aircrafts by the Cuban government, the US blockade against Cuba, and the hypocrisy in the timing and indictment of Raúl Castro.
Cuba n Envoy Draws 'Red Lines' Amid Specter of US Invasion and DOJ Targeting Castro Like Maduro President Barack Obama meets with Cuba n President Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, April 11, 2015.
, blackouts, shortages, and more than half a century of failed regime-change policy—is the indictment of 94-year-old revolutionary icon Raúl Castro.and Cuba do not have to be enemies. In fact, just 10 years ago, the two countries were normalizing relations.
I was in Panama City at the 2015 Summit of the Americas when, to the delight of everyone there, former US Presidentand Raúl Castro famously shook hands, marking the first substantial public interaction between leaders of the two countries in decades. Obama said, “The United States is not interested in being prisoners of the past,” while Raúl Castro thanked Obama for taking steps toward normalization and called him “an honest man.
” The opening was a win-win for both countries: an influx of US tourists, a flourishing of private businesses, and new openings for civil society. Then cameFast forward to today, with the indictment of Raúl Castro for allegedly ordering the 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes that left four men dead. I was in Cuba at the time leading a group of US CEOs interested in investing on the island.
The next day, we were supposed to meet with Fidel Castro. But after the planes were shot down, the meeting was canceled and the business executives rushed to take the next flight back to Miami. It was a tragic and regrettable incident—not only because of the lives lost, but also because it hardened political attitudes toward Cuba for years to come, paving the way for the codification of the US blockade into law.
Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. The group’s leader, José Basulto, was a veteran of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion with a long history of anti-Cuban militancy. He openly admitted, “I was trained as a terrorist by the United States.
” The group repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana. Basulto himself declared after one such mission: “We want confrontation. ” Between 1994 and February 1996, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cuban civil aviation authorities documented more than 25 serious and systematic violations of Cuban airspace by aircraft associated with Brothers to the Rescue. , the Federal Aviation Administration , and international aviation authorities that these flights were illegal and dangerous.
US officials knew the risks. The National Security Archive’s declassified records, published on May 19, 2026, reveal that high-level US officials understood that continued Cuban airspace violations could lead to disaster. An FAA email from January 22, 1996—one month before the shootdown—explicitly warned of the “worst case scenario” that “one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes.
” The same document acknowledged that State Department officials understood the overflights could “only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government. ”Cuba adviser Richard Nuccio warned National Security Adviser Sandy Berger that “tensions are sufficiently high within Cuba… that we fear this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the plane. ” Yet the FAA refused Nuccio’s request to ground the flights.
While there is disagreement over whether the planes were ultimately shot down in Cuban or international airspace, the pilots had reportedly filed a false flight plan and again approached Cuban airspace despite direct warnings from Cuban controllers. The hypocrisy of indicting Raúl Castro nearly 30 years later is staggering, given the long history of anti-Cuban extremists operating from US soil to wreak havoc against the island with bombings, sabotage, and airline terrorism.
In 1976, terrorists bombed Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people onboard, including the entire Cuban national fencing team. In 1997, a 32-year-old Italian tourist was killed in a hotel bombing aimed at destroying Cuba’s tourism industry. Yet men implicated in these horrific acts, including Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were protected by US authorities and allowed to live freely in Miami.
And let’s remember: The same US government now pursuing charges against Raúl Castro has itself been carrying out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, strikes that have killed at least 193 people since September 2025, with no transparency or due process. This new indictment is simply a cynical escalation in the long US effort to force regime change in Cuba.
Will Washington try to use it as a pretext to invade the island and “extract” Raúl Castro, as it did with Nicolás Maduro in? Will it once again send US troops to occupy Cuba, as it did in 1898, 1906, and 1912? Will it ignite a civil war? We have no idea.
But we do know this: Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. Raúl Castro is 94 years old. Let him live out his final years in the country where he was born and for which he fought his entire life.
Instead of tightening the blockade and pushing Cuba toward greater, instability, migration, and despair, the United States should finally abandon its failed policy of domination, lift the sanctions, and allow Cubans—not Washington politicians or Miami hardliners—to decide Cuba’s future. It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits.
It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do.
Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today.
It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever.
We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong.
But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.
Other books include,"Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran" ;"Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection" ;"Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control" ;"Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart" , and "Stop the Next War Now" . , blackouts, shortages, and more than half a century of failed regime-change policy—is the indictment of 94-year-old revolutionary icon Raúl Castro.and Cuba do not have to be enemies.
In fact, just 10 years ago, the two countries were normalizing relations. I was in Panama City at the 2015 Summit of the Americas when, to the delight of everyone there, former US Presidentand Raúl Castro famously shook hands, marking the first substantial public interaction between leaders of the two countries in decades.
Obama said, “The United States is not interested in being prisoners of the past,” while Raúl Castro thanked Obama for taking steps toward normalization and called him “an honest man. ” The opening was a win-win for both countries: an influx of US tourists, a flourishing of private businesses, and new openings for civil society.
Then cameFast forward to today, with the indictment of Raúl Castro for allegedly ordering the 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes that left four men dead. I was in Cuba at the time leading a group of US CEOs interested in investing on the island. The next day, we were supposed to meet with Fidel Castro.
But after the planes were shot down, the meeting was canceled and the business executives rushed to take the next flight back to Miami. It was a tragic and regrettable incident—not only because of the lives lost, but also because it hardened political attitudes toward Cuba for years to come, paving the way for the codification of the US blockade into law. Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States.
And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. The group’s leader, José Basulto, was a veteran of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion with a long history of anti-Cuban militancy. He openly admitted, “I was trained as a terrorist by the United States. ” The group repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana.
Basulto himself declared after one such mission: “We want confrontation. ” Between 1994 and February 1996, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cuban civil aviation authorities documented more than 25 serious and systematic violations of Cuban airspace by aircraft associated with Brothers to the Rescue. , the Federal Aviation Administration , and international aviation authorities that these flights were illegal and dangerous. US officials knew the risks.
The National Security Archive’s declassified records, published on May 19, 2026, reveal that high-level US officials understood that continued Cuban airspace violations could lead to disaster. An FAA email from January 22, 1996—one month before the shootdown—explicitly warned of the “worst case scenario” that “one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes. ” The same document acknowledged that State Department officials understood the overflights could “only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government.
”Cuba adviser Richard Nuccio warned National Security Adviser Sandy Berger that “tensions are sufficiently high within Cuba… that we fear this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the plane. ” Yet the FAA refused Nuccio’s request to ground the flights.
While there is disagreement over whether the planes were ultimately shot down in Cuban or international airspace, the pilots had reportedly filed a false flight plan and again approached Cuban airspace despite direct warnings from Cuban controllers. The hypocrisy of indicting Raúl Castro nearly 30 years later is staggering, given the long history of anti-Cuban extremists operating from US soil to wreak havoc against the island with bombings, sabotage, and airline terrorism.
In 1976, terrorists bombed Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people onboard, including the entire Cuban national fencing team. In 1997, a 32-year-old Italian tourist was killed in a hotel bombing aimed at destroying Cuba’s tourism industry. Yet men implicated in these horrific acts, including Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were protected by US authorities and allowed to live freely in Miami.
And let’s remember: The same US government now pursuing charges against Raúl Castro has itself been carrying out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, strikes that have killed at least 193 people since September 2025, with no transparency or due process. This new indictment is simply a cynical escalation in the long US effort to force regime change in Cuba.
Will Washington try to use it as a pretext to invade the island and “extract” Raúl Castro, as it did with Nicolás Maduro in? Will it once again send US troops to occupy Cuba, as it did in 1898, 1906, and 1912? Will it ignite a civil war? We have no idea.
But we do know this: Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. Raúl Castro is 94 years old. Let him live out his final years in the country where he was born and for which he fought his entire life.
Instead of tightening the blockade and pushing Cuba toward greater, instability, migration, and despair, the United States should finally abandon its failed policy of domination, lift the sanctions, and allow Cubans—not Washington politicians or Miami hardliners—to decide Cuba’s future. Medea Benjamin Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.
Other books include,"Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran" ;"Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection" ;"Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control" ;"Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart" , and "Stop the Next War Now" . , blackouts, shortages, and more than half a century of failed regime-change policy—is the indictment of 94-year-old revolutionary icon Raúl Castro.and Cuba do not have to be enemies.
In fact, just 10 years ago, the two countries were normalizing relations. I was in Panama City at the 2015 Summit of the Americas when, to the delight of everyone there, former US Presidentand Raúl Castro famously shook hands, marking the first substantial public interaction between leaders of the two countries in decades.
Obama said, “The United States is not interested in being prisoners of the past,” while Raúl Castro thanked Obama for taking steps toward normalization and called him “an honest man. ” The opening was a win-win for both countries: an influx of US tourists, a flourishing of private businesses, and new openings for civil society.
Then cameFast forward to today, with the indictment of Raúl Castro for allegedly ordering the 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes that left four men dead. I was in Cuba at the time leading a group of US CEOs interested in investing on the island. The next day, we were supposed to meet with Fidel Castro.
But after the planes were shot down, the meeting was canceled and the business executives rushed to take the next flight back to Miami. It was a tragic and regrettable incident—not only because of the lives lost, but also because it hardened political attitudes toward Cuba for years to come, paving the way for the codification of the US blockade into law. Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States.
And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. The group’s leader, José Basulto, was a veteran of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion with a long history of anti-Cuban militancy. He openly admitted, “I was trained as a terrorist by the United States. ” The group repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana.
Basulto himself declared after one such mission: “We want confrontation. ” Between 1994 and February 1996, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cuban civil aviation authorities documented more than 25 serious and systematic violations of Cuban airspace by aircraft associated with Brothers to the Rescue. , the Federal Aviation Administration , and international aviation authorities that these flights were illegal and dangerous. US officials knew the risks.
The National Security Archive’s declassified records, published on May 19, 2026, reveal that high-level US officials understood that continued Cuban airspace violations could lead to disaster. An FAA email from January 22, 1996—one month before the shootdown—explicitly warned of the “worst case scenario” that “one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes. ” The same document acknowledged that State Department officials understood the overflights could “only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government.
”Cuba adviser Richard Nuccio warned National Security Adviser Sandy Berger that “tensions are sufficiently high within Cuba… that we fear this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the plane. ” Yet the FAA refused Nuccio’s request to ground the flights.
While there is disagreement over whether the planes were ultimately shot down in Cuban or international airspace, the pilots had reportedly filed a false flight plan and again approached Cuban airspace despite direct warnings from Cuban controllers. The hypocrisy of indicting Raúl Castro nearly 30 years later is staggering, given the long history of anti-Cuban extremists operating from US soil to wreak havoc against the island with bombings, sabotage, and airline terrorism.
In 1976, terrorists bombed Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people onboard, including the entire Cuban national fencing team. In 1997, a 32-year-old Italian tourist was killed in a hotel bombing aimed at destroying Cuba’s tourism industry. Yet men implicated in these horrific acts, including Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were protected by US authorities and allowed to live freely in Miami.
And let’s remember: The same US government now pursuing charges against Raúl Castro has itself been carrying out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, strikes that have killed at least 193 people since September 2025, with no transparency or due process. This new indictment is simply a cynical escalation in the long US effort to force regime change in Cuba.
Will Washington try to use it as a pretext to invade the island and “extract” Raúl Castro, as it did with Nicolás Maduro in? Will it once again send US troops to occupy Cuba, as it did in 1898, 1906, and 1912? Will it ignite a civil war? We have no idea.
But we do know this: Despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. And the United States has absolutely no right—zero—to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs. Raúl Castro is 94 years old. Let him live out his final years in the country where he was born and for which he fought his entire life.
Instead of tightening the blockade and pushing Cuba toward greater, instability, migration, and despair, the United States should finally abandon its failed policy of domination, lift the sanctions, and allow Cubans—not Washington politicians or Miami hardliners—to decide Cuba’s future. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different.
We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire.
To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent.
Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share.
With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in?
Politics US Raúl Castro Indictment Shootdown Of Aircrafts US Blockade Anti-Cuban Extremism US Officials Orlando Bosch Luis Posada Carriles Sanctions Defense Hawks Diplomatic Ties
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
What to know about the US indictment of former Cuban President Raúl CastroFormer Cuban President Raúl Castro has been charged in a U.S. indictment with murder and other crimes for his alleged role in the downing of two civilian
Read more »
What to know about the US indictment of former Cuban President Raúl CastroFormer Cuban President Raúl Castro has been charged in a U.S. indictment with murder and other crimes for his alleged role in the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by Miami-based exiles in 1996 off the coast of the Caribbean island.
Read more »
U.S. announces charges against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro in 1996 downing of aircraftThe indictment was related to Castro’s alleged role in the shootdown of two small planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro, now 94, was Cuba’s defense minister at the time.
Read more »
What to know about the US indictment of former Cuban President Raúl CastroFormer Cuban President Raúl Castro has been charged in a U.S. indictment with murder and other crimes for his alleged role in the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by Miami-based exiles in 1996 off the coast of the Caribbean island.
Read more »