U.S. Reps. María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez, and Nicole Malliotakis announced a news conference on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol.
The lawmakers plan to make the case for the U.S. indictment of Raúl Castro for the 1996 fatal attack on Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.
“The walls are closing in on the dictatorship. And for the first time in a long time, the regime looks nervous,” Salazar wrote in a statement published on Tuesday on X.
Earlier this year, the group sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking that his administration consider indicting Castro, now 94.
“We’re more hopeful than ever about the Castro regime’s collapse,” Gimenez wrote in a statement published on Tuesday on X.
Castro and his late brother, Fidel Castro, were accused of ordering the Cuban Air Force shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue’s Cessna 337 Skymasters that had departed from the Opa Locka Executive Airport at about 3:20 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996.
Carlos Costa and Pablo Morales were in the Cessna 337C, registered in the U.S. as N2456S, and Mario De La Peña and Armando Alejandre were in the Cessna 337B, registered in the U.S. as N5485S, records show.
Air-to-air missiles fired from Cuban Air Force MiG-29 fighter jets hit both planes — killing Alejandre, 45; Costa, 29; and De la Peña, 24, who were U.S. citizens; and Morales, 29, a U.S. resident, records showed.
“Both Cessna aircraft broke up in the air from the explosions of the missiles, the wreckage impacted the sea and sank,” according to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s report.
Interactive graphic: 4 Brothers to the Rescue killed
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