The Justice Department is making ready to pursue an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, according to three sources acquainted with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on Friday. This development comes as President Donald Trump threatens potential army motion against the communist-governed island nation.

One source told the AP that the possible indictment is linked to Castro’s purported involvement in the 1996 taking pictures down of 4 plane operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group. At the time of the incident, Castro served as protection minister.

All three sources requested anonymity as they weren’t licensed to talk about an energetic investigation.

The Cuban authorities didn’t reply to a request for remark on the potential indictment, which CBS reported earlier.

Any legal charge against Castro, which might need to be accepted by a grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana.

Following the U.S. army’s brazen seize of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the Trump administration shortly turned its consideration to its ally Cuba and ordered an financial blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, main to extreme blackouts across the island, rising food insecurity, and heightening ongoing financial woes across the island.

But the U.S. struggle in Iran gave Cuban leaders one thing of a reprieve from U.S. speak of regime change.

Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will play nicely with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade members of the U.S. army to pursue a second struggle of alternative — this time just 90 miles from Florida.

“There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” said Feinberg. “There’s no clear line of succession and it’s hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”

Trump calls Cuba ‘a declining country’

The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a particular working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to construct circumstances against top Cuban officers amid calls by a number of south Florida Republicans to reopen its investigation into Castro’s alleged position in the 1996 shootdown.

As Trump seeks to wind down the struggle in Iran, hypothesis has been growing that he might soon flip his consideration back to Cuba after pledging earlier this yr a “friendly takeover” of the nation if its management didn’t open up its economic system to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

Trump declined to talk about a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the Justice Department.

“But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country — they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officers, including Castro’s grandson, during a high-level go to to the island on Thursday.

Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 2011, and then handed energy to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019.

While he largely has prevented the highlight since retiring in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he’s widely believed to wield energy behind the scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who beforehand met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Aircraft shootdown a watershed second for US-Cuba ties

Cuba’s shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna plane operated by the Brothers to the Rescue was a watershed second in a long time of hostilities between the 2 international locations.

At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring methods to cut back tensions with a Cold War adversary but confronted stiff opposition from exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing financial deprivation and single-party rule.

The Cubans had warned the U.S. authorities for months that it was ready to defend against what it thought-about deliberate provocations. But those calls went unheeded and on Feb. 26, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just past Cuba’s airspace, according to an investigation carried out by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A 3rd airplane, carrying the group’s chief, narrowly escaped.

“With hindsight, it appears the Castros’ motive was to slow down the Clinton outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their national security posture,” said Richard Fienberg, who labored on Cuban points at the National Security Council at the time.

They succeeded past their wildest desires, said Feinberg.

Shortly after the shootdown, Congress handed what grew to become recognized as the Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. commerce embargo enacted in 1962 and made it far more difficult for successive U.S. presidents to have interaction with Cuba.

To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single particular person of conspiracy to commit homicide in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo Hernández, the chief of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the Nineteen Nineties, was sentenced to life in prison but was launched by President Barack Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as half of an attempt to normalize relations with Cuba.

Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted but are outdoors the attain of U.S. law enforcement while residing in Cuba.