Surviving pilot Jose Basurto told USA TODAY: “I have spent the last few years heartbroken to see crimes go unpunished.”
US to indict former Cuban president Raul Castro
The United States is considering indicting former Cuban President Raul Castro on charges related to an incident 30 years ago.
- In 1996, a Cuban Migjet shot down two Cessnas operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four volunteers.
- The United States is reportedly considering indicting former Cuban leader Raul Castro in connection with the shooting incident.
- The charges come amid heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba, including increased sanctions and political pressure.
- Jose Basurto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue and the pilot of the third plane that escaped, wants justice in the case.
For years, that image has haunted Jose Basulto.
Two Cessna planes exploded six minutes apart in airspace more than 29 miles off the coast of Cuba. The four best friends and fellow volunteers were vaporized in a fireball, their debris falling into the sea, and their bodies never to be seen again.
Basurto, 85, the founder of the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, was the third plane, registration number N2506, to be the only one to escape from a Cuban MiG-29 missile, according to an account of the Feb. 24, 1996 shootout by the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
“I have spent the last few years with the pain of seeing crimes go unpunished,” Basurto told USA TODAY in an interview. “I have thought about this for a long time and believe it is finally time for justice to be served.”
Basurto and the rescued brothers are at the center of recent reports that the United States is considering charges against Raul Castro, the ailing 94-year-old leader of Cuba’s de facto ruler and longtime military leader, in connection with the shootings.
The possible charges are related to the 1996 downing of two Cessna planes flown by Brothers, a Cuban Air Force MIG fighter rescue volunteer, officials told USA TODAY.
The possible charges come at a tense time between the two countries, long-standing Cold War rivals. Since the dramatic midnight raid and arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the United States has steadily increased pressure on Cuba, cutting off oil supplies, tightening sanctions and hinting at possible military action while offering an economic deal if things change.
Indictments against Castro and other Cuban leaders are widely seen as a potential first step toward overturning Cuba’s political status quo, including the launch of military action against Cuba.
“The indictment of Raul Castro is essentially the Trump administration’s declaration of war on Cuba,” said Peter Kornbluh, co-author of “Back Channels to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana.” “It will be recognized as such not only in Cuba but all over the world.”
USA TODAY has reached out to the Cuban embassy in Washington for comment.
News that the U.S. is considering indicting Mr. Castro came hours after CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a delegation to Havana on May 14 to convey a message from President Donald Trump to Cuban officials and Mr. Castro’s grandson, Raul “Laurito” Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.
The brothers’ shooting down of the rescue plane was one of the most politically charged incidents between the United States and Cuba, leading to a federal lawsuit against Cuba and even spawning the 2019 film “Wasp Network,” about how Cuban spies were involved in the incident.
For Basurto, the indictment represents a challenge to justice that has been 30 years in the making.
“This has been on my mind ever since the assassination happened,” he said. “I believe God is with us, and I believe that God, beyond any human court, will ultimately decide what this outcome will be.”
Searching for Cuban man lost at sea
Basurto founded Brothers to the Rescue in 1991, during Cuba’s devastating economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of subsidies to the communist island. Many Cubans attempted to reach U.S. shores for a chance at asylum, crossing the Florida Strait on homemade personal watercraft, sometimes made from several inner tubes strung together.
In 1994, more than 35,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States on 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.
Basurto’s planes typically flew miles apart over a large quadrant of the Florida Straits, zigzagging over the endless ocean and peering into the whitecaps for signs of life. Upon spotting the raft, the pilot dropped supplies and radioed the U.S. Coast Guard from the raft’s location, which motored over and retrieved the occupants.
Basurto said his pilots helped rescue more than 5,000 Cubans stranded at sea.
But they repeatedly flew into Cuban airspace, infuriating Cuban leaders. As Mr. Clinton curbed the flow of rafters to Florida, Mr. Basurto 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 in the Cuban countryside. Eight months later, in perhaps his most daring flight, he buzzed a Cessna over Havana, raining down thousands of religious medallions and flyers reading “Brothers, Not Comrades” along Havana’s wide seaside boulevard, the Malecon.
Basurto, a native of Santiago de Cuba, was hailed as a hero among Cuban exiles in Miami, a veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and later admitted to having participated in other CIA-led missions against the Cuban regime. He was also marked as a dangerous provocateur by the Cuban authorities.
On the afternoon of February 24, 1996, Basurto set out on another mission, ostensibly to search 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 was rescued by Brothers to the Rescue four years ago while attempting to cross the Channel in a makeshift raft, and later joined the group as a co-pilot. All three others were U.S. citizens.
According to the Inter-American Commission report, Costa and Delapeña, who were piloting the two planes, told air traffic controllers in both Miami and Havana that they planned to fly toward the 24th parallel, the northern limit of the Havana flight information zone.
“We blew his (expletive) away!”
As the two planes approached the 24th parallel, the Cuban Air Force deployed two MiGs to intercept them. The report said that at around 3:21 p.m., Cuban pilots spotted one of the small planes, received permission to engage it, and fired a heat-seeking missile, causing the plane to evaporate, leaving only an oil slick in the sea below. Six minutes later they opened fire on the second plane, destroying it as well.
The Cuban pilots were recorded celebrating the shooting, and their words were later published in the press.
“We blew his (expletive) away!” one of the pilots yelled. “He won’t give us any more (expletive) trouble.”
After the second Cessna was destroyed, one of the pilots was heard saying, “Homeland or death, you bastard! Another one crashed.”
According to the report, the Cuban pilot did not issue a radio warning to the small plane, as required by international law.
The Basurto carried three passengers and flew nearby before returning to the group’s base at Opa-locka Airport near Miami.
“They were American citizens,” Basurto said. “The planes they were flying were destroyed. They were American aircraft, properly licensed, and they were flying there in accordance with their rights, which they had full rights to exercise.”
The Inter-American Commission report said Cuba was “responsible for violating the right to life” and concluded 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, saying the planes repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and threatened Cuba’s sovereignty.
Following international outcry over the shooting, Mr. Clinton tightened sanctions against Cuba and a year later signed the Helms-Burton Act, which codified America’s toughest sanctions against Cuba.
At the time, Raul Castro was Cuba’s Minister of Defense and Commander of the Cuban Armed Forces. He is widely considered to have been the country’s military and intelligence operations commander at the time of the shooting. In 2006, El Nuevo Herald published a report detailing audio recordings in which Raul Castro allegedly admitted giving the order to shoot down the Cessna.
“I told them (Mig pilots) to try to shoot them down over (Cuban) territory, but they (rescue brother planes) would enter Havana and leave,” a voice purportedly belonging to Raul Castro said in the recording. “Of course, with air-to-air missiles, it’s going to be a fireball and it’s going to hit the city. … Well, if they show up again, knock them into the ocean.”
But in the year leading up to the shooting, Cuban officials, through a series of backchannel meetings and diplomatic messages all the way to Fidel Castro, repeatedly urged Washington to prevent the provocative flights of Brothers to the Rescue, said author Kornbluh.
The night before, on February 23, 1996, White House officials, including Mr. Clinton’s special assistant on Cuba, Richard Nuccio, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, learned of Mr. Basurto’s flight plans, he said. Sensing growing hostility toward Cuban flights, Nuccio instructed Federal Aviation Administration officials in Miami to ground Basurto and the other volunteers. FAA officials refused.
“This downing was a Greek tragedy over Cuba,” Kornbluh said. “It was wrong and unjustified, but not unjustified.”
There’s a spy among us
It was later revealed that Cuban spies had infiltrated the group and that their espionage efforts may have contributed to the shooting down. One of the spies, Juan Pablo Roque, fled to Cuba the day before the fateful flight, and another spy, Gerardo Hernández Nordero, provided Havana with the plane’s flight schedule.
Hernández and four other spies were later arrested and became known as the “Cuba Five.” In December 2014, as part of the restoration of relations between Cuba and the United States initiated by President Barack Obama, three spies were released and deported to Cuba in exchange for Alan Gross, a US contractor imprisoned in Cuba for trying to give satellite equipment to the island’s Jewish community.
On February 13, 2026, four U.S. congressmen led by Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart called on President Trump to indict Raul Castro as a way to address “long-standing injustices that, under your leadership, your administration is in a position to resolve on its own.”
Basurto said rumors that Raul Castro’s indictment was imminent have been percolating in Miami for some time. He said he hoped other Cuban leaders would be similarly charged in connection with the shooting.
“All those responsible should be prosecuted,” Basurto said. “There are quite a few guilty parties involved. Raul Castro is one of them, probably the central figure. … There were many spies for the Castro regime here in Miami who were even connected to the FBI and pretended to be serving American interests. They all have to be prosecuted, because they participated in that murder.”
For now, Basurto said he is closely monitoring the progress of negotiations between the United States and Cuba and remains hopeful that changes may still occur in Cuba.
“I never lost hope,” he said. “I don’t know when the date is or how it’s going to happen, but I have hope. I believe in God and I believe there is a higher power overseeing all of this to make it happen.”
Contributors: Francesca Chambers and Josh Meyer, USA TODAY
Rick Jarvis is a national correspondent for USA TODAY’s investigative team. Follow Jarvis on X: @MrRJervis.
