US raises pressure on Cuba as it indicts former President Raul Castro on murder charges
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Trump called the indictment of Castro a “very big moment” but dismissed plans of the US taking military action on the island nation as they had with Venezuela in recent months.
The United States on Wednesday indicted Cuba's former leader Raul Castro on murder charges, fuelling speculation that President Donald Trump will try to topple the communist state.
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The charges against the former president – who at 94 years old remains influential in Cuban politics – stem from the deadly 1996 downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots.
Castro is the younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba's 1959 communist revolution.
"We expect that he will show up here by his own will or by another way and go to prison," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a news conference in Miami attended by cheering Cuban-Americans.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The US government previously capitalised on a domestic indictment to justify military action in January an operation that toppled and captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of Cuba.
Trump hailed the indictment on Wednesday as a "very big moment" but played down prospects of moving in on Cuba, whose economy has been in deepening crisis for months amid a US oil blockade and economic pressure.
"There won't be escalation. I don't think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart. It's a mess, and they sort of lost control," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
The Cuban government in a statement said that the 1996 shootdown was "legitimate self-defence" against an airspace violation.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on X that the charges carry no legal basis and "add to the file they are fabricating to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba."
Five other Cubans were also charged, including the air force pilots who shot down the planes.
Four people died in the 1996 incident, plummeting relations between the United States and Cuba. Two decades later, Raul Castro joined US president Barack Obama in an effort to reconcile.
Trump reversed Obama's effort to improve relations and has been steadily tightening sanctions on the island, already under a US embargo almost continuously since the communist revolution.
Washington’s stunning ousting of Maduro has hit Havana hard, cutting off a supply of free Venezuelan oil and cash to the island which has suffered major blackouts since losing that lifeline.
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