HIALEAH GARDENS, Fla. — Mario de la Peña, Jr., Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, and Armando Alejandre were flying in two unarmed Cessna 337 Skymaster light aircraft when they were killed on Feb. 24, 1996, over the Florida Straits.
De la Peña, 24; Costa, 29; Morales, 29; and Alejandre, 45, were members of Brothers to the Rescue, a nonprofit organization that had been helping to save Cuban refugees at sea since 1991.
Cuban Air Force pilots in two Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets took off from a Havana airfield and shot down the two unarmed Cessnas miles away from Cuba’s maritime exclusion zone, according to U.S. lawmakers.
“Those four individuals were murdered in cold blood,” U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz Balart said on Thursday during a news conference at the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum in Hialeah Gardens.
Diaz Balart and Reps. Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody urged President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek an indictment in the International Court of Justice.
“Raúl Castro was involved in that conspiracy to murder the Brothers to the Rescue,” Moody, the 38th Florida attorney general, said during the news conference.
Shortly before 3:25 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996, the pilot of one of the Cuban MiGs used an air-to-air missile to shoot down the first Cessna more than 6 miles north of the Cuban exclusion zone, and the second Cessna exploded about 7 minutes later, almost 18.5 miles north of the Cuban exclusion zone, according to U.S. lawmakers.
Brothers to the Rescue members reported that only one of three planes, Cessna 337, with registration N2506, had returned to the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport on Feb. 24, 1996. The survivors: Jose Basulto, Arnaldo Iglesias, Silvia Iriondo, and Andres Iriondo.
“There were two that ordered the shootdown: Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro. Fidel Castro passed away. Nothing was done,” Silvia Iriondo said during the news conference, adding that she was on the plane with her husband, Andres Iriondo, to serve as a spotter.
On June 21, 1996, Raúl Castro admitted to his role during a government Radio Rebelde interview, according to an audio released by El Nuevo Herald in 2006.
“I said, ‘They should try to shoot them down over our territory’ ... With one of those air-to-air missiles, what comes crashing down is a ball of fire, and it’s going to fall right on top of the city ... Well, shoot them down over the sea when they appear,” Castro said in Spanish, according to the audio file, later also released by the Cuba Center.
On July 18, 1996, CBS aired Dan Rather’s interview with Fidel Castro, admitting that he had issued the “general orders” that resulted in the shoot-downs.
On July 27, 1996, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement condemning the use of military weapons against civilian aircraft and calling on Cuba to comply with international law.
“The Cuban people have endured torture, repression, and some of the darkest chapters any country in the western hemisphere has had to experience, and this is one of the most horrendous crimes committed by this regime,“ Salazar said during the news conference.
On Sept. 29, 1999, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a report citing the International Civil Aviation Organization’s report on the shootdowns and concluding that Cuba had violated “the right to life and the right to a fair trial.”
“What was it, you know, about them that made the Cuban regime want to shoot them down? Well, it was that it was bringing a spotlight to the regime every single day,” Gimenez said during the news conference.
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