The Justice Department is pushing to indict 94-year-old Raúl Castro, the former president of Cuba, according to two U.S. official familiar with the matter.
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One of the officials says the criminal action is over two civilian planes on a volunteer mission that were downed by Cuba in 1996. Four Cuban Americans were killed.
The law enforcement effort against Castro, the brother of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, comes as President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain its grip on the island despite months of sustained U.S. pressure, NBC News has reported.
NBC News reached out to Cuba’s foreign ministry in Havana and the island’s embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment and did not immediately hear back.
Protests have erupted on the island amid fuel shortages and blackouts as U.S. sanctions choke off critical supplies and a surprise military operation ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, neutering a critical ally.
Still, the Cuban regime has shown little sign of ceding power or offering major concessions as Washington demands.
President Donald Trump, on Air Force One back from a China trip Friday, said the Castro investigation was a question for the Justice Department.
“You talk about a declining country, they are really a nation or a country in decline,” Trump said. “So we’re going to see.”
Trump administration leaders have stepped up their efforts in recent weeks. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Havana on Thursday meeting with Cuban officials, according to an agency official and a statement from the Cuban government.
According to a statement from its Communist Party, Cuba provided information to the U.S. that “made it possible to categorically demonstrate that Cuba does not constitute a threat to U.S. national security, nor are there legitimate reasons to include it on the list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.”
The Trump administration began exploring earlier this year whether federal prosecutors could charge members of the regime or the Communist Party with crimes, NBC News had reported. The multi-agency effort is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Federal prosecutors are actively working the case, but it’s not clear whether its gone before a grand jury yet, which will determine whether to indict Castro. The possible indictment was first reported by CBS News.
The 1996 shooting of the planes remains one of the most politically-charged episodes in modern U.S.-Cuba relations.
The volunteers routinely flew over the Florida Straits looking for Cuban refugees making their way to the U.S. on makeshift boats.
Fidel Castro, who was president at the time, claimed that the planes violated Cuban airspace and that they were downed as a defense against “terrorist threats.” Raúl Castro was head of the armed forces at the time.
Congress later found the pilots “were flying unarmed and defenseless planes in a mission identical to hundreds they have flown since 1991 and posed no threat whatsoever to the Cuban Government, the Cuban military, or the Cuban people.”
The case has remained a sore point. Cuban American members of Congress wrote a letter to Trump in February asking the Justice Department to consider indicting Raúl Castro in the shooting of the planes.
