Cuba murdered four American volunteers over international waters in 1996.
Now Florida has issued an arrest warrant for the man who ordered it.
And Raul Castro said six words that just became a Florida murder warrant.
Florida Just Did What Washington Took 30 Years to Do
On October 19, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that a Miami-Dade judge had signed a no-bond arrest warrant for 95-year-old Raúl Castro on conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
The charge stems from February 24, 1996.
That morning, three unarmed Cessna aircraft from Brothers to the Rescue lifted off from Opa-Locka Airport in Miami-Dade County.
Their mission was humanitarian – searching the Florida Straits for Cuban rafters trying to reach America.
Cuban MiG fighter jets shot two of the planes out of the sky using heat-seeking missiles over international waters.
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Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales were killed.
They were American citizens doing charity work.
According to the Florida arrest warrant, Raúl Castro – then Cuba's defense minister – had given explicit orders to shoot the planes down.
"So I said: Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone," Castro said in a recorded statement months after the attack.
That recording is now part of the warrant.
"Raúl Castro ordered the premeditated, state-sanctioned murder of four Floridians in cold blood," Uthmeier said at the announcement alongside Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Trump administration backed Florida's action immediately.
This state warrant builds on a federal superseding indictment unsealed in May at Miami's Freedom Tower, which charged Castro and five former Cuban military pilots with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder.
Venezuela's Socialists Pick a Strange Hill to Die On
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela – the PSUV – issued an official statement this week condemning the Florida warrant as a violation of Cuban sovereignty and international law.
They called the charges part of an "intensification of the economic blockade" and demanded Latin American unity to defend Cuba from American "siege."
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They said: "Today more than ever, the PSUV reiterates its call to respect Cuba's sovereignty and the right of its people to independence and self-determination."
Sovereignty.
That word is doing a lot of work for a party defending a man whose own recorded orders are now evidence in a murder case.
What's telling is who did not sign the statement.
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez – whose party this is – did not put her name on it.
Interior minister and PSUV Secretary-General Diosdado Cabello did not put his name on it.
That's not an accident.
The Awkward Reality Rodríguez Is Living
Since Trump's special operations captured Nicolás Maduro in January, Rodríguez has been running a very different kind of government.
She moved toward Washington – joining oil talks, taking Trump's calls, and overseeing the release of political prisoners.
Trump praised her cooperation publicly, calling her performance excellent.
That makes the nameless PSUV statement look exactly like what it is: the hard-socialist base throwing a public tantrum that the party's actual leadership refuses to endorse.
Rodríguez's own background makes this balancing act extraordinary.
Her father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, was a Venezuelan Marxist terrorist who participated in the kidnapping of American businessman William F. Niehous in the 1970s.
She once described imposing socialism in Venezuela as an act of "personal revenge" over his death.
Now she's the American president's preferred partner in Caracas.
Venezuela's Socialists Are Defending a Man Whose Own Voice Convicts Him
The PSUV statement is a tell.
It signals internal fracture – between a socialist base that still treats the Castro brothers as revolutionary gods, and a leadership that knows Maduro is sitting in a U.S. facility and that open defiance of Washington carries a price.
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Cuba's communist president Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges politically motivated.
Russia called the warrant "baseless and contrived."
Venezuela's socialists issued the same condemnation – just without any names attached.
Meanwhile, Florida has a no-bond warrant ready the moment Castro sets foot in any country that will extradite him.
The Trump DOJ already has a federal indictment waiting behind it.
The families of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. waited 30 years for this.
They're not the ones who should be embarrassed right now.
Sources:
- Christian K. Caruzo, "Venezuela's Ruling Socialists Condemn Florida for Raúl Castro Arrest Warrant," Breitbart News, October 22, 2026.
- "Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier Secures State Arrest Warrant for Raúl Castro," Fox News, October 19, 2026.
- "US Unseals Indictment Charging Raúl Castro in 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown," Jurist, May 20, 2026.
- "DOJ Charges Ex-Cuban Leader Raúl Castro with Murder, Conspiracy to Kill for 1996 Shoot-Down," Florida Phoenix, May 20, 2026.
- "Who Is Delcy Rodriguez? Venezuela's New President Cooperating with Trump After Maduro's Capture," Washington Examiner, January 3, 2026.
