Star Metro - US indicts former Cuban president as pressure builds

An indictment unsealed in a federal court in Florida charged the influential former president over the 1996 downing of` two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots.

Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led the 1959 communist revolution, was charged with murder, conspiracy to kill Americans, and destruction of aircraft.

The charges added fuel to speculation that President Donald Trump intends to topple the Cuban government.

Trump previously seized on a US domestic indictment to justify military action in January that toppled and seized Venezuela's then president Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of the Cuban authorities.

Four people died in the 1996 downing of planes, sending relations plummeting. Two decades later, Raul Castro joined then US president Barack Obama in an effort to reconcile.

But Trump reversed Obama's effort to improve relations.

Trump has repeatedly signaled that the Cuban government could be next after Venezuela to fall, and earlier this month even said Washington would be "taking over" the Caribbean island, about 90 miles (145 km) from Florida, "almost immediately."

In a video message to Cuban people in Spanish, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, accused the Havana leadership of theft, corruption and oppression.

"President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba," Rubio said.

"A new Cuba where you have a real opportunity to choose who governs your country and vote to replace them if they are not doing a good job."

- Ready for 'new chapter' -

The US ousting of Maduro has hit Cuba hard, cutting off a supply of free Venezuelan oil to the island which has been plunged into an economic crisis.

"In the US, we are ready to open a new chapter in the relationship between our people and our countries," Rubio said, according to an English translation of his speech released by the State Department. "And, currently, the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country."

In his speech on the day when the Cuban community in the United States marks the island's independence, Rubio accused Gaesa, the military-backed conglomerate estimated to control 70 percent of the Cuban economy, of enriching the elites at the expense of ordinary citizens.

"A 'state within the state' that is accountable to no one and hoards the profits from its businesses for the benefit of a small elite," Rubio charged. "And the only role played by the so-called 'government' is to demand that you continue making 'sacrifices' and repressing anyone who dares to complain."

Four US Congress members expressed hope that the indictments will see justice served.

"We have a different president now, a president who is not willing to look the other way," Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida told reporters during a press conference. "We expect that today justice is finally arrived."

Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York added: "This a Communist regime that has brutally killed, tortured its people, and much of it was work of Raul Castro himself."

"We hope this will be a turning point for the Cuban people," she said.

While Cuban Americans on Wednesday marked Cuba's independence, the Cuban government emphasizes different dates in its historical narrative, particularly the victory of Fidel Castro's revolution on January 1, 1959.

"Intervention, interference, dispossession, frustration: that is what May 20th signifies in Cuba's history," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a post on X, referring to the Platt Amendment, an addendum to Cuba's pre-communist constitution that allowed Washington to intervene militarily in Cuba.

D.Ch. Nadeau--SMC