Fears Mount in Cuba as DOJ Reportedly Prepares to Criminally Indict Raúl Castro

Cuba’s top diplomat in the United States on Friday underscored the inviolability of her country’s sovereignty amid tenuous negotiations with the Trump administration and mounting fears that the US is planning to criminally indict a former Cuban president and possibly invade the island to abduct him.

Cuban Chargé d’Affaires Lianys Torres Rivera told The Hill that her country’s socialist government is open to negotiating with the US, but that “the only exception is our sovereignty, independence, and right to self-determination,” adding that “those are the red lines.”

Torres Rivera acknowledged that ramped-up US pressure — including President Donald Trump’s invasion threats and tightening of the internationally condemned 65-year economic embargo — is inflicting tremendous suffering on the Cuban people.

The Cuban government said Thursday that Trump’s oil blockade has left the island and its 11 million people without fuel — a situation United Nations experts last week described as illegal “energy starvation.”

“We have reorganized the whole country, the healthcare system, the education system, the transportation system, to keep the basic services running,” Torres Rivera told The Hill. “But it doesn’t mean that they are running normally. They are running under huge stress.”

Still, “a serious country that respects yourself… won’t put on the table your political system or your internal order that the people of our country decide in a sovereign way,” she stressed.

The delicate balancing act Cuba is being forced to perform was on stark display on Thursday as Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana for talks aimed at pressuring Cuban officials into complying with demands that critics say would inrfinge upon the nation’s sovereignty. These likely include political and economic reforms, releasing political prisoners, and ending or weakening Cuba’s alliances with US adversaries including China, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.

It was a bitter pill to swallow for Cubans, as the CIA was behind myriad efforts to topple their government, from assassination attempts against revolutionary leader Fidel Castro to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion to supporting Cuban exile terrorists who carried out deadly attacks that Havana says killed thousands of people.

Further stoking fears of aggression from the Trump administration, unidentified US officials told CBS News that the Department of Justice is preparing to criminally indict 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro for the 1996 shoot-down of planes belonging to the subversive US-based group Brothers to the Rescue after they violated Cuban airspace.

Some observers noted the 1976 midair bombing by US-based anti-Castro militants of Cubana de Aviacion Flight 455, a commercial airliner carrying 73 passengers and crew. The CIA, under then-Director George H.W. Bush, knew that Cuban exiles were plotting to blow up a Cubana plane, but did not warn Havana. The perpetrators of the bombing eventually made their way back to Florida, where they were welcomed as heroes.

Others surmised that the reported planned indictment is a pretext for a US invasion and arrest of Castro similar to January’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on dubious — and partially retracted — narco-terrorism allegations. Thirty-two Cubans, including military and police officers providing security for Maduro, were killed by US forces during the abduction operation.

“To me, this signals that the Pirate State could be planning another kidnapping operation against Cuba like they did in Venezuela,” British journalist Richard Medhurst said in response to the reporting, referring to the US. “This is the lawless behavior they want to normalize around the world.”

ACLU head of digital engagement Stefan Smith said on social media: “Remember Maduro and Venezuela? If you’re a foreign leader indicted in American courts, we claim the right to send the military to kidnap you. Indictment is permission to invade.”

Following his visit to Cuba, Ratcliffe said that negotiations “will not stay open indefinitely,” remarks that followed numerous threats by Trump to “take” Cuba.

“Whether I free it, take it — I think I can do anything I want,” the president said in March as his fuel embargo caused blackouts that brought deadly suffering to the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.

“We are preparing to defend ourselves,” Torres Rivera said, adding that a US invasion “could be a big mistake. It could be a bloodbath.”

“We don’t want Cubans dying in Cuba,” she stressed, nor “any American soldier.”