Florida Secures Arrest Warrant for ‘Communist Dictator of Cuba, Raúl Castro’

Attorney General James Uthmeier of Florida is seeking to arrest Cuba’s former dictator, Raúl Castro, for first-degree murder over shooting down two civilian planes in 1996. The charges are now added to May’s federal indictment, raising the prospect of the kind of Special Forces raid that surrounded the arrest of Venezuela’s strongman, Nicolás Maduro.“Raul Castro,” Mr. Uthmeier said at an announcement on Monday, “ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop pursuing accountability for that communist conspiracy.” As defense minister, Mr. Castro “helped put civilian pilots” conducting a humanitarian mission over international waters “in the crosshairs of Cuban MiGs.”In February 1996, four Cuban exiles from Brothers to the Rescue were searching for migrants on rickety rafts escaping what President Kennedy called “that imprisoned island.” Some 30 years later, Mr. Uthmeier said, “we are still fighting for justice for Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr.”At the time of the killings, President Clinton was seeking rapprochement with Raúl Castro’s brother, Fidel Castro, then the island’s communist party boss. The plane incident instead helped lead to passage of the stalled Helms-Burton Act. Also known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity, or Libertad, Act, it gave Kennedy’s 1962 embargo the force of law.Libertad, as this columnist wrote for The New York Sun in March, prevented a president from easing restrictions on Cuba until enumerated conditions were met. They required, among other things, a government that “does not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro.” The former died in 2016, and the latter gave up official duties two years later.Mr. Castro hasn’t aged out of America’s search for justice, though. Speaking alongside Mr. Uthmeier, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones said that the “historic federal indictment laid the groundwork,” and the Sunshine State has “now taken the important step of bringing charges under Florida law.”Florida’s action takes the prosecution of Mr. Castro out of presidential hands just as Helms-Burton did with the embargo. “If you have a communist sympathizer that ends up back in the White House,” Mr. Uthmeier said, “they cannot pardon, they cannot commute, they cannot immunize these dictators from our state proceedings.”Although Mr. Castro “is not actually going to sit trial today,” Mr. Uthmeier said, the warrant “matters, first, because for over 30 years, government officials did nothing” and “looked the other way.” He added that American officials had “sat at baseball games” with the island’s leaders, invoking President Obama attending nine innings with Mr. Castro at Havana in 2016.The arrest warrant “is not just a piece of paper,” Mr. Uthmeier said. Mr. Castro “certainly doesn’t have the pleasure to just leave” the Pearl of the Antilles “and move about freely.” America has extradition agreements with most countries and, “should he visit” one, the attorney general said, Mr. Castro “will end up here.”Mr. Quiñones said that the Trump Administration is “committed to pursuing every lawful, prosecutable avenue to bring accountability.” The statement echoed the preamble to the capture of Mr. Maduro, who was charged with a string of federal crimes including narco-terrorism conspiracy, drug-running, torture, and repression of American citizens.Cuba helped prop up Mr. Maduro after an election condemned as illegitimate by the Biden Administration and the Organization of American States. Operation Absolute Resolve, launched to capture him, left at least 32 Cuban military and security personnel dead without costing a single American life, which may make a repeat performance tempting.Mr. Castro’s arrest, however, presents a greater challenge. The Castros have built a cult of personality since seizing power in 1959. Despite his retirement, the Stalinist leader maintains control over security forces. They consist of native hard-liners, not the foreign mercenaries hired to protect Mr. Maduro from a restive populace.In March, President Trump said in the Oval Office that he’ll have the “honor of taking Cuba in some form.” Mr. Castro is left guessing whether that includes American Special Forces bursting into his bedroom to arrest him as they did Mr. Maduro.

Florida Secures Arrest Warrant for ‘Communist Dictator of Cuba, Raúl Castro’

Florida Secures Arrest Warrant for ‘Communist Dictator of Cuba, Raúl Castro’

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