Trump regime symbolically targets 94-year-old Raúl Castro

As Donald Trump’s far-right regime keeps tightening the longstanding US stranglehold on Cuba, revolutionary and ex-president Raúl Castro has now become a symbolic target – at the age of 94.

Castro’s brother Fidel was a man the West loved to hate as he resisted US-led efforts to retake control of Cuba after its 1959 revolution. But because Fidel is no longer alive, the rabidly anti-Cuban regime of Donald Trump wants Raúl’s head instead.

Why Raúl Castro?

The US apparently wants to indict Raúl Castro because Cuba shot down two planes that Cuban exiles reportedly flew into Cuban airspace in 1996. Four people died. And Castro was in charge of the army and defence ministry at the time.

In 1996, a UN press release explained that Cuba’s foreign minister had called the incident:

a sovereign act in defence of its borders, taken after a long history of provocative acts by that organization.

It added:

The most recent incident in that long history of aggressions had been the provocations by the airplanes belonging to the so-called “Brothers to the Rescue” organization, which during the past 20 months had violated Cuban airspace 25 times – always from the territory of the United States, he said.

And it clarified that:

Addressing the Assembly at a special meeting held at Cuba’s request, he said the group’s aggressive plans left no room for doubt that it was a paramilitary, terrorist organization in open war against his country.

Just another excuse for US regime-change efforts?

The US and its allies waged a long campaign of terror against Cuba, which continues to this day. As the Cuba Solidarity Campaign explained:

The most infamous of these is ex-CIA agent and Cuban national, Luis Posada Carriles. Carriles was responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people.

The US protected Posada Carriles until his 2018 death in Miami. So it is, of course, highly hypocritical that the US would now seek Castro’s arrest for four deaths in a controversial situation. But as the Canary has reported:

Donald Trump’s second administration has massively tightened the longstanding US stranglehold on Cuba. His escalating campaign of terror has brought the island’s health system to its knees, putting thousands of lives at risk.

Trump has regularly threatened regime change, saying:

I do believe I’ll be… having the honour of taking Cuba… Taking Cuba, I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it.

And he’s promised that:

we’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon

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