US President Donald Trump. Photo courtesy of Anadolu.
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday there is no reason for his administration to escalate efforts on Cuba following months of increasing pressure on the island nation.
“There won’t be escalation. I don’t think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart. It’s a mess, and they sort of lost control, they’ve really lost control of Cuba,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in the state of Maryland.
Asked if he thought he would need to execute a military operation akin to the one that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said, “I don’t want to say that.”
Hours earlier, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the US Justice Department filed criminal charges against former Cuban President Raul Castro.
“We are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill US nationals,” Blanche said at a ceremony honoring four people killed in 1996 when Cuban jets shot down two planes operated by a Miami-based exile group known as “Brothers to the Rescue.”
“Mr. Castro, and the others are charged with additional crimes as well, including destruction of aircraft and four individual counts of murder,” he said.
Court records show that the indictment against Castro, filed in federal court in Miami, accuses him of one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez lambasted the indictment, accusing the Trump administration of lying and distorting the facts surrounding the downing of the planes three decades ago.
“On February 24, 1996, Cuba acted in legitimate self-defense within its jurisdictional waters, following repeated and dangerous violations of our airspace by notorious terrorists—a fact of which the U.S. administration at the time was alerted on more than a dozen occasions, yet it ignored the warnings and allowed those violations to continue,” he wrote on US social media company X.
“The ethical stature and humanistic spirit of his legacy demolish any infamy that might be attempted against Army General Raúl Castro. As a guerrilla commander and as a statesman, he earned the love of his people,” he added. (Anadolu)