Miami judge signs no-bond warrant for Raúl Castro, 95

A Miami judge signed a no-bond arrest warrant for Raúl Castro on Oct. 16, finding probable cause that the former Cuban president conspired with agents operating inside Florida to commit the first-degree murder of four men killed in 1996.

The warrant was approved by Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the 11th Judicial Circuit Court after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, according to the warrant and affidavit obtained by the Miami Herald. Fajardo Orshan is a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

A copy obtained by Fox News Digital shows one charge, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, a felony, with no bond attached. The warrant was issued in Miami-Dade County and directs law enforcement to arrest Castro immediately. He is 95.

What the affidavit alleges

Florida's claim to jurisdiction over an attack that happened at sea rests on two Cuban agents who were in Miami and Key West. The affidavit says they had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, reported back on the naval air station in Key West in the weeks before the shootdown, and were told to transmit the group's flight data to Cuban authorities.

The spy network told the two not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue between Feb. 24 and Feb. 27, the affidavit says. One of them left Florida for Cuba on Feb. 23. The next day, the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force destroyed two of the group's planes.

Three U.S. citizens and one legal permanent resident were killed.

The dead were Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr., who were flying two Cessna 337s. Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami group, flew unarmed civilian aircraft to search for Cuban migrants stranded or lost at sea, and by the mid-1990s had also taken up anti-Castro political activity, including dropping pro-democracy leaflets over Cuba. Their bodies were never recovered, CiberCuba reported.

The attorney general's Office of Statewide Prosecution will take jurisdiction over the case, which Florida is treating as a multi-circuit criminal conspiracy, according to Fox News Digital. The document also authorizes state authorities to pursue Castro's return to Florida to face the charge if he is arrested anywhere else in the United States.

Two cases, one defendant

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on May 20 charging Castro and five other former Cuban military officials with four counts of murder, two counts of aircraft destruction and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. He has been treated as a fugitive from federal justice since failing to appear in court. The Oct. 16 warrant is his second arrest warrant over the shootdown.

One defendant in the federal case is in American custody. Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a former lieutenant colonel in the Cuban Air Force, was transferred to Miami in June to face the charges after being sentenced for immigration fraud.

The state warrant describes the four deaths as the object of an agreement rather than the act of the pilots who fired the missiles.

The investigation revealed evidence of a conspiracy to kill persons aboard BTTR aircraft. The deaths of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. were the object of that conspiracy.

Investigators allege the plan originated with the Cuban regime's foreign intelligence service and moved up the chain of command, with Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel, then Cuba's leader, as the final decision-makers, according to the warrant. The affidavit treats the transmission of flight data and the surveillance of the Key West naval air station as the conduct that places the conspiracy inside Florida.

Castro was Cuba's minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces at the time and ran the country's armed forces during the attack.

How Florida reopened the case

Uthmeier announced a state-level criminal investigation into Castro's role in the four deaths in March, the Herald reported, and his office reopened the state's inquiry after he took office. CiberCuba reported that he described the case as having stalled during the Biden administration and said his office would leave no detail uninvestigated.

In May, Uthmeier appeared with Justice Department officials at the Miami Freedom Tower when the federal government announced its charges and arrest warrant.

Florida lawmakers have demanded investigations and prison terms for the Cuban leadership involved for decades, and the state is home to the largest Cuban diaspora in the nation. Until this year, the 30th anniversary of the shootdown, the closest the United States had come was a 2003 federal indictment of a Cuban general and two fighter pilots.

What Castro said in 1996

The warrant quotes a recorded statement Castro made months after the shootdown. He said the aircraft had violated the airspace and waters of the republic and that he had insisted the response be decentralized, with five generals given the authority. He said he had told them to try to shoot the planes down over Cuban territory, but that the aircraft would come into Havana and leave.

Of course, with a missile shot like that, plane against plane, what comes down is a ball of fire, and it is going to fall on top of the city. So I said: Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone.

The audio runs 11 minutes and 32 seconds, dates from June 1996, and was obtained and released in 2006 by the journalist Wilfredo Cancio, CiberCuba reported.

No U.S. arrest warrant can be executed in the normal way while Castro remains in Cuba, because the two countries have no working extradition arrangement. The state warrant's extradition language reaches only other American jurisdictions.

The Cuban government has rejected the U.S. prosecution, saying Brothers to the Rescue repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and that Cuba acted in defense of its sovereignty, according to Fox News Digital. The Castros said the flights were over Cuban waters. Both the United States and a United Nations investigation concluded the shootdown happened over international waters, the Herald reported.

CiberCuba described the state action as independent of the federal case, with the difference resting on jurisdiction, federal charges addressing offenses against national law and the Florida charge built on conduct inside the state.

What the record does not say

The accounts of the warrant and the affidavit do not identify the two Cuban agents by name, and neither says whether they face charges in Florida. The state warrant describes no defendant other than Castro. The federal case named five other former Cuban military officials, and only one of them, González-Pardo, is in American custody.

Uthmeier called a news conference for 10 a.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at Florida International University to announce the warrant, according to CiberCuba.