US indicts Raul Castro: Who were the 4 men killed in 1996 Cuba plane shootdown?
In 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed civilian planes over international waters and killed four volunteers
On the afternoon of 24 February 1996, eight volunteers boarded three small Cessna planes at an airport north of Miami. Only one plane made it back. Three decades later, the United States has finally charged the man many believe gave the order to kill them.
The four men who died that day were not soldiers. They were volunteers, a Vietnam veteran, a young student pilot, a Miami-born rescue flyer and a man who had once been rescued from the sea himself.
Carlos Alberto Costa, 29, was born in Miami Beach. He had flown more than 140 rescue missions searching for Cuban rafters lost in the Florida Straits. His older sister, Mirta Mendez had warned him to stop flying.
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"His words to me were: 'I am an American citizen. I do not break the law, and they cannot do anything to me,'" she recalled to the New York Times.
Armando Alejandre Jr, 45, was a Vietnam veteran born in Havana who came to the United States as a child after the Cuban Revolution.
His family said he believed the Brothers to the Rescue missions were about saving lives, not politics.
His widow, Marlene Triana, has waited three decades for justice.
"We've been talking about this for a long time now, and nothing ever actually happens," she told the New York Times, before adding: "It's about time someone finally had the guts to do it."
Mario Manuel de la Pena, 24, was born in New Jersey to Cuban parents and was in his last semester at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Those who knew him described him as idealistic and intensely patriotic.
Pablo Morales, 29, carried perhaps the most powerful story. He had once escaped Cuba himself on a raft and had been rescued by Brothers to the Rescue, only to later join the group and die flying for it.
In Miami's Cuban exile community, his story became a symbol of the entire exile experience: fleeing the island, surviving the sea, then dying trying to save others, as per Latin Times.
The bodies of all four men were never found.
What happened that day?
Brothers to the Rescue was founded in 1991 by Jose Basulto, a pilot and veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during a desperate wave of migration out of Cuba.
In the summer of 1994 alone, some 35,000 people fled Cuba on rafts, inner tubes and barely seaworthy vessels.
Basulto raised millions of dollars and organised regular flights over the Florida Straits to spot people lost at sea and call in the US Coast Guard, according to the New York Times.
On the day of the attack, Basulto had filed a flight plan and announced himself to Havana's air traffic control.
Cuban controllers warned him: "We inform you that the area north of Havana is activated. You are taking a risk by flying south of 24."
Basulto's response was recorded in transcripts later made public and it was: "We know that we are in danger each time we fly into the area south of 24, but we are ready to do so as free Cubans."
Minutes later, Cuban MiG fighter jets appeared. "They're going to shoot at us?" passenger Sylvia G Iriondo was recorded saying.
Without issuing a direct warning or escorting the planes out, as required under international aviation conventions, the first Cessna was shot down at 3:21pm, 18 miles from Cuba's shore.
The second was destroyed seven minutes later, more than 30 miles from Cuba's coast, according to a report by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights cited by the New York Times.
"They were pulverised in the sky in international airspace in broad daylight before the eyes of the world," said Iriondo, who was a passenger on the third plane that escaped, in an interview with the New York Times.
"It was a heinous crime committed against defenceless and unarmed small planes."
New charges bring renewed hope for victims' families
The attack caused international outrage.
A UN-backed report found that Cuba had fired on civilian aircraft in international airspace. The victims' families took Cuba to US federal court and won a $187.6 million judgment in 1997, with some payment coming from frozen Cuban assets.
In 2003, two MiG pilots and their commanding general were indicted on murder charges but none were ever brought to the United States to face trial, according to the New York Times.
For thirty years, the families, survivors and Cuban American lawmakers pushed for charges against Raul Castro, who was Cuba's defence minister when the planes went down.
On 20 May this year, that wait finally ended.
The Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Castro at Miami's Freedom Tower, the first time a former Cuban head of state has faced prosecution in the United States over the shootdown, according to Latin Times.
Basulto who is now 85, was direct: "US authorities have all the documentation, including radio transmissions between the MiG pilots who shot our airplanes. Bring Raul Castro to court, bring him physically here."
Felipe summed up what many in the community felt: "The community's been asking for the last 30 years to get this done. But there's always a political reason why it doesn't."
And Iriondo, who survived that February afternoon, kept it simple: "We're looking forward to this."
