On May 20—marking 124 years since the US ended its military occupation of the island and the Cuban Republic was formally proclaimed in 1902—the Trump administration delivered its most naked threat yet against the island.
The US Justice Department unsealed an indictment on murder and conspiracy charges against Raúl Castro, 94, in connection with the 1996 downing of two aircraft operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
Retired from public office for nearly a decade, Castro previously served as Cuba’s president and leader of its ruling party. He was one of the comandantes of the guerrilla army led by his brother Fidel that came to power in 1959.
Hours before the indictment was announced, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a Spanish-language video addressed directly to the Cuban people, demanding regime change and advocating the policy of recolonization that Washington is pursuing across Latin America.
The unsealing of the indictment in Miami Wednesday resembled less a legal proceeding than a campaign rally with Washington’s counterrevolutionary agents gathered to cheer for Donald Trump and applaud the prospect of direct US military intervention against Cuba.
Amid this right-wing celebration, one question was noticeably ignored: Who will be held accountable for the 66 years of unrestrained US violence, killings and terror against Cuba?
The indictment against Raúl Castro is an abominable act of political propaganda to justify a planned military aggression against an impoverished nation of less than 10 million people.
The three-decade-old incident referred to in the indictment is the February 24, 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over the Straits of Florida, which has been systematically misrepresented by every US administration since Bill Clinton’s. The Clinton administration, the Republican Party and the corporate media all denounced it as “cold-blooded murder,” invoking international statutes barring the use of military force against civil aircraft. The CIA insisted that José Basulto, the pilot of the plane that escaped, and the others were not paid US intelligence agents.
None of this was true. The Cuban Embassy in the United States responded to the indictment by recalling that Cuba had formally denounced more than 25 territorial violations by Brothers to the Rescue between 1994 and 1996—protests that Washington systematically ignored.
Hellbound and Down 