Miami-Dade Judge Signs No-Bond State Arrest Warrant for Raúl Castro in 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown

Florida has obtained its own arrest warrant for Raúl Castro, the 95-year-old former Cuban leader, charging him with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the Feb. 24, 1996, shootdown of two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes over the Florida Straits. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan signed the no-bond warrant after finding probable cause, according to NBC6 and a copy of the warrant obtained by Fox News Digital. The state case runs alongside a federal indictment unsealed in May, and it gives Florida a second legal claim on a man that many in Miami's Cuban exile community have blamed for the killings for three decades.

Attorney General James Uthmeier was scheduled to announce the warrant and lay out the state case at a 10 a.m. news conference Monday, Oct. 19, at Florida International University in Miami. Early reports said Gov. Ron DeSantis would join him. NBC6 later reported that the event was organized and led by Uthmeier.

What the state warrant says

The warrant directs that Castro be arrested immediately and held without bail, according to Fox 13. It names the four men who were killed aboard the two Cessna Skymaster aircraft: Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. Three of them were U.S. citizens and the fourth was a legal U.S. resident, according to CBS News Miami.

The Miami Herald reported that the judge signed the warrant on Friday, Oct. 16, CBS News Miami said. Fajardo Orshan is the chief judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, which covers Miami-Dade County. She served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida from 2018 to 2021, during President Donald Trump's first term.

Court documents described by WSVN and CBS News Miami say Cuban agents transmitted flight data on the Brothers to the Rescue missions and conducted surveillance of the Naval Air Station in Key West. The supporting affidavit says that conduct is enough to establish probable cause that a conspiracy took place on Florida soil and that Castro gave the orders, according to those reports. That Florida connection is what gives a state court jurisdiction over a killing that happened in the air over the straits.

Investigators allege that Cuba's foreign intelligence service planned the shootdown and that the plan moved up the military chain of command, with Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel as the final decision makers, Fox 13 reported. In a recorded statement months after the attack, Castro recounted telling commanders to shoot the planes down “at sea when they show up,” according to the warrant.

Statewide Prosecution takes the case

Because the alleged conspiracy reaches across more than one judicial circuit, the Office of Statewide Prosecution, which operates inside the attorney general's office, will take jurisdiction over the case, Fox 13 reported. Uthmeier's office has previously said Cuban spies operated in at least the Eleventh Circuit, which covers Miami-Dade, and the Sixteenth Circuit, which covers Monroe County and the Florida Keys.

The warrant states that Florida would seek full extradition if Castro is arrested outside the state, and it allows the state to pursue his return to face the felony charge if he is taken into custody anywhere else in the United States.

The state effort has been building for months. On March 4, 2026, Uthmeier announced that his office was reopening a state-level criminal investigation into Castro's role in the shootdown, according to the Florida Phoenix. He has said he directed statewide prosecutors to reopen a previously closed case file on Castro when he took office in 2025. His predecessor, now U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, tried to pursue state charges around 2022, and Uthmeier has said the Biden administration shut that attempt down, the Florida Phoenix reported.

The federal indictment

The state warrant is separate from the federal case announced in Miami on May 20, 2026. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida unsealed a superseding indictment, filed under seal on April 23, charging Castro and five former Cuban military pilots with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Castro was also charged with four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

The five other defendants are Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, Emilio Jose Palacio Blanco, Jose Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raul Simanca Cardenas and Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, according to NBC6. Only one defendant was in U.S. custody at the time of the announcement, on an unrelated immigration charge, and NBC6 later reported that one of the named pilots was sentenced for immigration fraud on May 28. The rest, including Castro, are in Cuba.

Todd Blanche, then the acting U.S. attorney general, announced the federal case in Miami with Uthmeier and FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia. Blanche said he expected Castro to face prosecution in the United States, either by “his own will or by another way.” WSVN quoted Blanche as saying the United States will not forget its citizens. The federal case comes amid sharp tension between Washington and Havana and follows the January capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, whom U.S. forces flew to New York to face charges.

The 1996 shootdown

Brothers to the Rescue was founded in Miami in May 1991 and is led by José Basulto. Its volunteer pilots flew unarmed aircraft over the Florida Straits to search for Cuban rafters lost at sea. By the mid-1990s the group had also become involved in anti-Castro political activity, including dropping pro-democracy leaflets over Cuba.

On Feb. 24, 1996, a Cuban Air Force MiG-29UB shot down two of the group's Cessna Skymasters, killing all four men aboard. The attack drew international condemnation and remains one of the defining wounds for the Cuban American community in South Florida.

The case has been in American courts before. In 2001, a federal jury in Miami convicted Gerardo Hernández, a member of the Cuban spy ring known as the Wasp Network, of conspiracy to commit murder, based on prosecutors' claim that he passed information about the Brothers to the Rescue flights to Havana. He was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years. The Obama administration commuted his sentence in 2014 as part of a prisoner exchange with Cuba. Another Wasp Network agent, Juan Pablo Roque, had infiltrated the group before the shootdown.

Cuba's response and the limits of a warrant

The Cuban government rejects the American prosecutions. It has long argued that Brothers to the Rescue repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and that its military acted to defend the country's sovereignty.

As a practical matter, neither the state warrant nor the federal charges can be carried out while Castro remains in Cuba. An old bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries has not been applied since 1959, and Havana has shown no willingness to surrender its former leader. Castro served as Cuba's defense minister for decades, including at the time of the shootdown, and succeeded his brother as president before stepping aside.

For the victims' families, the symbolism matters. One relative told WSVN the new warrant was “not total, but it is some justice.” Another said, “My father stood for a free Cuba.”

What's next

Uthmeier's FIU news conference was expected to provide more detail on the evidence behind the state charge and on how the Office of Statewide Prosecution plans to proceed. With no realistic path to arrest while Castro stays in Cuba, both the state and federal cases will likely remain open on paper unless he travels abroad or the political situation in Havana changes. If he were ever detained in another state or country, Florida says it would seek his return to stand trial in Miami-Dade County. In the federal case, prosecutors continue to pursue the five former pilots charged alongside Castro.