Florida Judge Signs No-Bond Arrest Warrant for Raúl Castro

A Miami judge has signed an arrest warrant for Raúl Castro on a no-bond charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, 30 years after Cuban fighter jets shot two small civilian planes out of the sky over the Florida Straits.

The warrant was issued in Miami-Dade County and orders law enforcement to arrest the 95-year-old former Cuban president immediately. It was signed Oct. 16 by Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the 11th Judicial Circuit, who found probable cause that Castro conspired with Cuban spies operating inside Florida to kill the four men aboard the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft on Feb. 24, 1996.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose office reopened the state investigation after he took office, scheduled a 10 a.m. news conference for Monday, Oct. 19, at Florida International University to announce it. Fajardo Orshan is the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

What the warrant actually says

"The investigation revealed evidence of a conspiracy to kill persons aboard BTTR aircraft. The deaths of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. were the object of that conspiracy," the warrant reads, according to a copy obtained by Fox News Digital.

Investigators allege the plan to shoot down the planes and kill the people inside them moved up through the Cuban regime's foreign intelligence service and its military chain of command, with Raúl Castro and his older brother Fidel as the final decision-makers. Raúl was Cuba's minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces at the time.

The supporting affidavit names him in full. There is "probable cause to believe the defendant, Raul Modesto Castro Ruz, agreed with others to commit first-degree murder of … persons aboard (the Brothers to the Rescue) aircraft," it states, according to the warrant and affidavit obtained by the Miami Herald.

The attorney general's Office of Statewide Prosecution will take jurisdiction over the case, which the state is treating as a multi-circuit criminal conspiracy rather than a single-county prosecution.

How a Florida court claims jurisdiction over a Cuban leader

The answer sits in Key West and Miami. The affidavit filed Oct. 16 says Florida has jurisdiction because two Cuban spies had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue inside the state, which puts a piece of the alleged conspiracy on Florida soil.

Weeks before the shootdown, according to the affidavit, those spies reported on the naval airbase in Key West and were instructed to transmit Brothers to the Rescue flight data back to Cuban authorities. The spy network then told the two moles not to fly with the group between Feb. 24 and Feb. 27.

On Feb. 23, one of them left Florida and returned to Cuba. The next day, the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force destroyed two Brothers to the Rescue planes. State prosecutors argue that the flight data and the surveillance of the naval air station are enough to establish that a conspiracy took place in Florida.

The investigation behind the warrant was run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Castro's own recording

The warrant quotes a recorded statement Castro made months after the attack. In it he describes the orders he gave to senior military leaders.

"They have violated the airspace, the waters of the Republic. I made it clear that this had to be decentralized if we wanted it to do its job, and five generals were given the authority. I used to say: Try to shoot them down over our territory. But they would come into Havana and leave," Castro said, according to the warrant.

He went on: "Of course, with a missile shot like that, plane against plane, what comes down is a ball of fire, and it is going to fall on top of the city. So I said: Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone."

The audio runs 11 minutes and 32 seconds and dates to June 1996. It was obtained and released in 2006 by journalist Wilfredo Cancio.

The four men who died

Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. were flying two Cessna 337s when Cuban MiG fighters opened fire over international waters in the Florida Straits. Costa, de la Peña and Alejandre were U.S. citizens. Morales was a legal permanent resident. Their bodies were never recovered.

Brothers to the Rescue was a Miami-based group that flew unarmed civilian aircraft looking for Cuban migrants stranded or lost at sea. By the mid-1990s the organization had also taken on political work, including dropping pro-democracy leaflets over Cuba.

The attack reshaped U.S.-Cuba relations and has stayed an open wound in South Florida, which is home to the largest Cuban diaspora in the country.

A federal case is already running

This is Castro's second warrant in the same incident. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on May 20, 2026, charging him and five other former Cuban military officials with four counts of murder, two counts of aircraft destruction and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.

A federal arrest warrant followed, and Castro has been treated as a fugitive from federal justice since he failed to appear in court. Uthmeier stood with Justice Department officials at the Miami Freedom Tower in May when the federal charges were announced.

Only one defendant in the federal case is in American custody: Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a former lieutenant colonel of the Cuban Air Force. He was moved to Miami in June 2026 to face the federal charges after being sentenced for immigration fraud.

The state and federal actions are separate tracks. One rests on federal law, the other on crimes the state says were committed inside Florida.

Havana's position has not moved

The Cuban government has rejected the U.S. prosecution of Castro. Its position is that Brothers to the Rescue repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and that Cuba acted in defense of its sovereignty. The Castros maintained at the time that the flights were over Cuban waters.

The United States and a United Nations investigation both concluded the shootdown happened over international waters. The International Civil Aviation Organization found that the incident occurred outside Cuban airspace.

Nobody is going to knock on his door in Havana

There is no working extradition arrangement between the United States and Cuba, and Castro is in Cuba. No American warrant, state or federal, can be served on him there.

Florida built the document for the one scenario it can control. The warrant authorizes authorities to seek full extradition of Castro if he is arrested anywhere else in the United States, allowing them to pursue his return to Florida to face the felony charge. The no-bond designation means a judge would not set release conditions.

Choosing Florida International University for the announcement is its own message. The campus sits in a part of Miami where the Cuban exile community is a daily presence, not a talking point.

Thirty years of dead ends

Florida lawmakers have spent decades demanding investigations, indictments and prison time for the Cuban leadership connected to the attack. Until this year, the closest the United States got was a 2003 federal indictment of a Cuban general and two fighter pilots.

Uthmeier announced the state-level criminal investigation in March 2026, saying the case had stalled during the Biden administration and that his office would leave no detail uninvestigated. Seven months later, a chief judge signed off.

Castro turned 95 this year and has been out of power for years. He made a public appearance after the federal charges were filed. Two American warrants now carry his name, and both are tied to a single morning in February 1996 when four men took off from South Florida to look for rafters and never came back.