By Jana Winter
May 14 (Reuters) – The United States plans to indict Cuba’s Raul Castro, a U.S. Department of Justice official said late on Thursday.
The timing of the potential indictment, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, was not immediately clear, but the official said it sounds imminent.
The potential indictment of the 94-year-old former president of Cuba and brother of Fidel is expected to focus on the downing of aircraft, the official said on condition of anonymity.
CBS previously reported that the case relates to Cuba’s deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.
Representatives for Cuba’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of normal business hours. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The development comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Havana. The Trump administration has described Cuba’s current communist-run government as corrupt and incompetent and is pushing for a regime change.
President Donald Trump has heaped pressure on the island, effectively imposing a blockade by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, igniting power outages and delivering blows to its economy.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida has been overseeing an effort to examine potential criminal charges against senior Cuban government officials.
Officials from both countries acknowledged earlier this year that they were in talks, but the negotiations appeared to founder amid the ongoing U.S. fuel blockade.
However, on Thursday, the Cuban government confirmed it had met with CIA chief John Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe told intelligence officials in Cuba that the U.S. was prepared to engage on economic security issues if Cuba makes “fundamental changes,” a CIA official said.
The United States has previously used criminal cases against foreign political figures to justify military actions.
In January, when the U.S. military attacked Venezuela, the Trump administration described the raid as a “law enforcement operation” to bring Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to New York to face criminal charges.
Trump in March threatened that Cuba “is next” after Venezuela.
(Reporting by Jana Winter and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Writing by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Himani Sarkar)
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