Pilot escaped; four friends vanished. Now US weighs Raúl Castro charges

• In 1996, Cuban MiG jets shot down two Cessna planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four volunteers.
• The United States is reportedly considering an indictment against former Cuban leader Raul Castro in connection with the shootdown.
• A potential indictment comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, including increased sanctions and political pressure.
• José Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue who piloted a third plane that escaped, seeks justice for the incident.

For years, the images haunted José Basulto.  

Two Cessna planes, exploding six minutes apart, in the airspace more than 18 miles from Cuba’s coast. Four good friends and fellow volunteers vaporized in a fireball, their debris raining down to the sea, their bodies never seen again.

Basulto, 85, founder of the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, piloted a third plane, registration number N2506, and was the only one to escape the Cuban MiG-29's missiles, an accounting of the Feb. 24, 1996, shootdown by the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights shows.

“I have navigated these years with a pain in my heart, seeing that a crime remained unpunished,” Basulto told USA TODAY in an interview. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I believe the moment has finally arrived for justice to be served.” 

Basulto and Brothers to the Rescue are at the center of recent reports that the United States is considering filing an indictment against Cuba’s ailing leader, Raúl Castro, 94, the island’s de facto authority and longtime military leader, in connection with the shootings.

The possible charges are related to the 1996 shootdown of two Cessna planes piloted by Brothers to the Rescue volunteers by Cuban air force MiG fighter jets, sources told USA TODAY.  

A potential indictment comes at a tense time between the two longtime Cold War foes. After the dramatic midnight extraction and arrest of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro in January, the United States has been steadily increasing pressure on Cuba, cutting off its oil supply, tightening sanctions and hinting at potential military action, while offering an economic deal if changes are made.  

An indictment against Castro – or other Cuban leaders – is widely seen as a potential first step toward upending Cuba’s political status quo, including unleashing military action on the island.  

"An indictment of Raúl Castro is essentially the Trump administration's declaration of war on Cuba," said Peter Kornbluh, co-author of "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana." "It will be perceived as such in Cuba and around the world."

USA TODAY has reached out to the Cuban embassy in Washington for comment.

News that the United States was looking to indict Castro came hours after CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a delegation to Havana on May 14 to deliver a message from President Donald Trump to Cuban officials and Raúl "Raulito" Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, who is the elder Castro's grandson. 

The shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes was one of the most politically charged events between the United States and Cuba, led to federal lawsuits against Cuba and even spawned the 2019 movie “Wasp Network,” which portrayed how Cuban spies were involved in the incident.  

For Basulto, an indictment would mean a shot at justice, three decades in the making.  

“This has been on my heart ever since the assassination took place,” he said. “I believe that God is with us, and that – beyond the human courts – it is God who will ultimately decide what comes of this.” 

Searching for Cubans lost at sea 

Basulto founded Brothers to the Rescue in 1991 during a crushing economic crisis in Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union and the cessation of subsidies to the communist island. Many Cubans launched across the Florida Straits in homemade watercraft, at times just a few inner tubes fastened together, trying to reach U.S. shores for a chance at asylum.

In 1994, more than 35,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States via makeshift rafts in what became known as the Cuban rafter crisis. To resolve the crisis, then-president Bill Clinton directed that Cuban asylum-seekers picked up at sea be sent to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Basulto’s planes would typically fly a few miles apart over large quadrants of the Florida Straits, zigzagging over endless swaths of sea and peering down into the whitecaps for signs of life. Once a raft was spotted, the pilot would drop supplies and then radio in the raft’s position to the U.S. Coast Guard, which would motor over and collect the occupants.

His pilots helped rescue more than 5,000 Cubans stranded at sea, Basulto said. 

But they also repeatedly flew into Cuban airspace, incensing Cuban leaders. As Clinton curbed the flow of rafters to Florida, Basulto shifted the group's mission from rescue to provocation, according to "Back Channel to Cuba."

In November 1994, Basulto dropped Brothers to the Rescue bumper stickers over the Cuban countryside. Eight months later, in maybe his most daring flight, he buzzed his Cessna over Havana, raining down thousands of religious medallions and leaflets reading “Brothers, Not Comrades” along the Malecón, Havana’s broad seaside avenue, according to the book.

A native of Santiago de Cuba, Basulto was touted as a hero among Miami’s Cuban exiles, a veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion who later admitted to participating in other CIA-led missions against the Cuban regime. He was also marked as a dangerous provocateur by Cuban officials.  

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1996, Basulto took off on another mission, ostensibly looking for rafters. He was joined by two other planes carrying four people: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales. Morales had been rescued by Brothers to the Rescue four years earlier while attempting to cross the straits on a makeshift raft and later joined the group as a copilot. The other three were all U.S. citizens.  

Costa and de la Peña, who were piloting the two planes, alerted air-traffic controllers in both Miami and Havana of their flight plans, which would take them to the 24th parallel, considered the northernmost limit of the Havana Flight Information Region, according to the Inter-American Commission report.   

‘We blew his [expletive] off!’ 

As the two aircraft approached the 24th parallel, the Cuban air force deployed two MiGs to intercept them. At around 3:21 p.m., the Cuban pilots spotted one of the smaller planes, got authorization to engage and fired a heat-seeking missile, vaporizing the plane and leaving nothing but an oil slick on the sea below, according to the report. Six minutes later, they fired on the second plane, obliterating it as well.  

The Cuban pilots were recorded celebrating the shooting and their words later appeared in reports:

“We blew his [expletive] off!” one pilot exclaimed. “He won’t give us any more [expletive] trouble.” 

After the second Cessna was destroyed, one of the pilots could be heard saying: “Homeland or death, you bastards! The other one is also down.”

The Cuban pilots never radioed a warning to the smaller planes, as warranted by international law, according to the report.

Basulto, flying in the general vicinity with three passengers, returned to the group’s base at Opa-locka Airport near Miami.  

“They were American citizens,” Basulto said. “The planes they were flying were destroyed. They were American aircraft, properly licensed, and they were flying there by right, a right they were fully entitled to exercise.” 

The Inter-American Commission report concluded that Cuba "is responsible for violating the right to life" and that those killed in the attack "were arbitrarily or extrajudicially executed at the hands of agents of the Cuban State." Cuban officials defended the attack, claiming the planes repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and threatened their sovereignty.

Following international outcry over the shootings, Clinton tightened sanctions against Cuba and, a year later, signed into law the Helms-Burton Act, codifying the strictest U.S. sanctions against the island.  

At the time, Raúl Castro was Cuba’s defense minister and head of the Cuban armed forces. He has been widely viewed as the operational commander of the country’s military and intelligence apparatus at the time of the shootdown. In 2006, El Nuevo Herald published a report detailing audio recordings it claimed showed Raúl Castro admitting to giving the orders to shoot down the Cessnas.

”I told them [the MiG pilots] to try to knock them down over [Cuban] territory, but they [the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft] would enter Havana and go away," the voice alleged to be Raúl Castro's said on the recording. "Of course, with one of those missiles, air-to-air, what comes down is a ball of fire that will fall on the city. ... Well, knock them down into the sea when they reappear." 

During the year leading up to the shootings, however, Cuban officials – going all the way up to Fidel Castro – repeatedly urged Washington through a series of backchannel talks and diplomatic messages to stop the Brothers to the Rescue provocative flights, said Kornbluh, the author.

The night before, on Feb. 23, 1996, White House officials – including Richard Nuccio, special adviser on Cuba to Clinton, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher – learned of Basulto's planned flight, he said. Sensing Cuba's growing animosity toward the flights, Nuccio instructed Federal Aviation Administration officials in Miami to ground Basulto and the other volunteers. FAA officials refused.

"The shootdown was a Greek tragedy that evolved in the skies over Cuba," Kornbluh said. "It was wrong and unwarranted but it wasn’t unprovoked."

Spies among us 

Later, it was revealed that Cuban spies had infiltrated the group and their espionage may have contributed to the shootdown. One of the spies, Juan Pablo Roque, fled to Cuba the day before the fateful flights, while another, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, provided Havana with flight schedules of the planes.

Hernández and four other spies were later arrested and became known as the Cuban Five. In December 2014, as part of thawing of relations between Cuba and the United States initiated by President Barack Obama, three of the spies were released and deported to Cuba in exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor who was jailed in Cuba for trying to pass along satellite equipment to the island’s Jewish community.

On Feb. 13, 2026, four U.S. lawmakers, led by Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida, asked Trump to indict Raúl Castro as a way of addressing “a longstanding injustice that, under your leadership, your administration is uniquely positioned to resolve once and for all.” 

Basulto said rumors of an imminent indictment for Raúl Castro had been percolating in Miami for some time. He said he would like to see other Cuban leaders indicted in connection with the shootdown, as well.  

“Everyone who bears guilt should be indicted,” Basulto said. “There are quite a few guilty parties involved. Raúl Castro is one of them – perhaps the principal figure among them. ... Here in Miami, there were many spies for the Castro government who were even linked to the FBI and who were pretending to be serving the interests of the United States. All of them must be indicted, because they were part of that murder.” 

For now, Basulto said he is closely watching the developing talks between the United States and Cuba and holds out hope that there still could be change in Cuba.  

“I have never lost hope,” he said. “I don't know when the date will be, nor what the method will be, but I do have hope. I believe in God, and I believe there is a higher power presiding over all of this that will make that happen.” 

Contributing: Francesca Chambers and Josh Meyer, USA TODAY

Rick Jervis is a national correspondent for USA TODAY's Investigations team. Follow Jervis on X: @MrRJervis.