MIAMI — The indictment that the U.S. Justice Department announced on May 20 at the Freedom Tower, after a Miami grand jury charged Raúl Castro and five pilots on April 23, includes details about the role that Cuban spies played.
The indictment mentions Operation Scorpion, an effort involving Cuban spies’ efforts to sabotage Brothers to the Rescue, which CIA-trained Cuban exile Jose Basulto had founded in 1991.
The Cuban intelligence agency tasked spies “to perfect the confrontation” and “provide information” on Basulto’s “plans and activities,” according to the new indictment.
“We have sometimes dispatched Cuban citizens to the United States to infiltrate counter-revolutionary organizations, to inform us about activities that are of great interest to us,” Fidel Castro told CNN in 1998. “I think we have a right to do this.”
Basulto, now 85, remembers how volunteers flew small planes out of Miami-Dade County to search the Florida Straits in hopes of helping to save the Cuban refugees who were risking their lives to get to the U.S.
The Cuban operation’s spies, known as The Wasp Network, included Rene González, also known as “Castor” and “Iselin,” and Juan Pablo Roque, also known as “Vedette” and “German,” according to the indictment.
In 2001, federal prosecutors presented evidence that the FBI had investigated the 14-member Cuban spy ring, known in Spanish as “La Red Avispa,” while it operated in South Florida, records show.
To infiltrate Brothers to the Rescue as volunteers, “the spies posed as exiled pilots fleeing Cuba,” and Roque contacted the FBI as “an informant” who did not disclose he was a spy, according to the indictment.
Cuban intelligence ordered the spies to avoid flying with Brothers to the Rescue “in and around” Feb. 24, 1996, and cancelled a mission to “embarrass and undermine” Brothers to the Rescue, according to the indictment.
Cuban spies González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, and Fernando González, later known as the Cuban Five, were convicted in the 2001 federal case.
The new indictment includes a timeline of three of the spies’ actions before the shootdown: Hernández traveled to the U.S. from Cuba “on or about” Jan. 29, 1996; met with Roque on Feb. 22, 1996; and met with Rene González on Feb. 23, 1996, when Roque returned to Cuba.
Castro was accused of ordering the Cuban Air Force’s fatal shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue Cessna 337 Skymasters on Feb. 24, 1996.
“The passage of time does not erase murder, it does not diminish the value of those lives, and it does not weaken our commitment to the rule of law,” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said on May 20 at the Freedom Tower.
Cuban Air Force MiG-29 fighter jets flew out of the San Antonio de los Baños airfield in Cuba at about 3 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996, with “authorization to destroy” the Brothers to the Rescue’s “unarmed civilian aircraft,” according to the indictment.
Three Brothers to the Rescue Cessna 337 Skymasters registered in Florida departed from the Opa Locka Executive Airport at about 3:20 p.m., on Feb. 24, 1996.
During their last flight, Carlos Costa and Pablo Morales were in the Cessna 337C, and Mario De La Peña and Armando Alejandre were in the Cessna 337B. They were in international waters, according to the indictment.
“Four humanitarians were on a noble mission to help those fleeing oppression,” FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia, a former member of the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami Beach, said on May 20 at the Freedom Tower.
At about 3:21 and 3:28 p.m., a Cuban MiG 29-1 fighter jet fired air-to-air missiles “without warning” and 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, according to the indictment.
Records show the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence recognized Hernández for his role and announced his promotion to captain.
“If you kill Americans, we will pursue you. No matter who you are. No matter what title you hold,” U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on May 20 at the Freedom Tower about the new indictment.
Cuban MiG 29-2 and MiG 29-3 joined Cuban MiG 29-1 in the pursuit of the third Brothers to the Rescue’s Cessna 337 Skymasters with “the intent of destroying it,” according to the indictment.
Basulto, the Cessna’s pilot, managed to get away after witnessing the attack. He was flying with three passengers: Arnaldo Iglesias, the secretary of Brothers to the Rescue; Silvia Iriondo, the president of Mothers and Women Against Repression for Cuba; and Iriondo’s husband, Andres Iriondo-Olazabal.
Basulto, Iglesias, and Iriondo testified before Congress in 1999. They had been asking for the U.S. to indict the Castro brothers for giving the orders.
“The U.S., whose defense mechanisms were on alert that day to follow BTTR’s flight, saw these events unfold on its radars and heard them on its monitors,” Basulto said during his testimony in 1999. “Nevertheless, they remained motionless and in absolute silence, as if no response was required to protect U.S. lives, property, and national security. Why?”
During his testimony in 1999, Iglesias talked about Roque’s betrayal.
“We took him in as a friend and as a collaborator in our humanitarian mission. It turns out that he was acting on the orders of Fidel Castro to infiltrate our group and to participate in the downing of these two planes,” Iglesias said. “You might have read on the day before the shootdown, [Roque] returned to Cuba, leaving his wife in Florida ... and confess to a lie ... our plane survived, and we were in a position to disprove anything [Roque] would have said.”
During her testimony, Iriondo recalled the horror.
“It is often that I close my eyes and find myself recalling the humming of the tiny Cessna as we searched through clouds, worried about the two sudden bursts of smoke over the horizon that had just taken the lives of our colleagues. I recall clutching my husband’s hand,” Iriondo said, and later added, “In a radio transmission to their base, Castro‘s pilots gloated over their heinous deed.”
There were other Cuban spy cases after the shootdown. Three members of the Cuban mission to the United Nations, who were Wasp Network handlers, and two Cuban diplomats were expelled for espionage.
The FBI arrested Ana Montes, a senior intelligence analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency who had worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2001, and she confessed to spying for Cuba for 16 years.
Rene González and Hernández, who had been arrested in 1998, were convicted in 2001 of espionage conspiracy, acting as an unregistered agent, and conspiracy to commit murder.
Montes, who confessed to disclosing the identities of four U.S. intelligence officers working undercover, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage in 2002 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Iriondo-Olazabal died as a great-grandfather on Aug. 16, 2009, in Miami-Dade County. Rene González was released from federal prison in 2011 after serving 13 years of a 15-year sentence, and he was on probation when he returned to Cuba in 2013.
“I was a pilot here in Cuba ... I took a chance and stole a plane, and I landed in Key West. Of course, I had been born in the United States. I showed my birth certificate,“ Rene González, who later renounced his U.S. citizenship, told Democracy Now in 2013 from Havana.
Hernández, who was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment, was released during a prisoner swap in 2014. Fidel Castro died in 2016, and Raúl Castro served as president until 2018.
In 2020, Netflix released “Wasp Network,” an espionage thriller starring Penélope Cruz and Ana de Armas. Two defamation lawsuits followed by Ana Margarita Martinez, who was briefly married to Roque in Miami, and Basulto.
In 2023, Montes was released from prison after serving 21 years and 3 months, and the FBI arrested Victor Manuel Rocha, a retired U.S. diplomat who worked for the U.S. Southern Command.
Roque, who had served in the Cuban Air Force when he arrived at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay in 1992 and claimed to be a refugee — only to return to the island four years later, died after a heart surgery in 2025.
Interactive: Read the new indictment
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