Florida obtained a no-bond warrant charging Raúl Castro with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown.

A no-bond warrant is a judge's finding of probable cause and an order to arrest. It does not, by itself, put a 95-year-old former head of state in a Miami courtroom. The state count is conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, beside a federal case over the same 1996 shootdown. The next fight is whether anyone can execute the warrant.

Fox News reported Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, that Florida has a state arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro on a no-bond charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the Feb. 24, 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes. Fox News said the warrant was issued in Miami-Dade County, directs law enforcement to arrest him, and says a judge found probable cause that he conspired to commit first-degree murder in the deaths of four men aboard the unarmed civilian aircraft. The Miami Herald reported the warrant was signed Friday by Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the 11th Judicial Circuit, and that Attorney General James Uthmeier's Office of Statewide Prosecution and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement helped obtain it. The Herald said the affidavit names him Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz and finds probable cause that he agreed with others to commit first-degree murder of people on those planes. He is 95. Fox News reported that Uthmeier's office reopened the state's investigation after he took office. The Herald reported that he announced that state investigation in March.

Fox News, citing the warrant, reported that investigators allege a plan by Cuba's foreign intelligence service to shoot the planes down and kill the people on them moved through the chain of command, with Raúl Castro and his brother, Fidel Castro, as the final decision-makers. The warrant quotes a recorded statement Castro made months after the attack, Fox News reported. In that recording, as Fox News recounted it, he said the planes had entered Cuban airspace and waters, that he had given five generals the authority to act, and that he had told them to try to bring the planes down over Cuban territory because a missile hit over Havana could drop wreckage on the city. "Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone," he said, according to Fox News's account of the warrant. The warrant says the object of the conspiracy was the deaths of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr., Fox News reported.

The Herald reported that the affidavit puts Florida's jurisdiction on two Cuban spies in Miami and Key West who infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue. Weeks before the shootdown, the Herald reported, those spies reported on the naval air station in Key West and were told to send the group's flight data to Cuban authorities. The network told them not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue between Feb. 24 and Feb. 27, and on Feb. 23 one of them left Florida for Cuba, the Herald reported. The next day the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force destroyed two of the group's planes. Three of the four people killed were Americans and one was a legal permanent resident, the Herald reported. The Herald reported that the Castros said the flights were over Cuban waters, and that the United States and a United Nations investigation concluded the shootdown happened over international waters. WSVN reported the four were killed in international waters on a humanitarian patrol. Fox News described Brothers to the Rescue as a Miami group that flew unarmed civilian planes searching for Cuban migrants at sea and that, by the mid-1990s, was also dropping pro-democracy leaflets over Cuba.

The state warrant is a second case over the same attack. The Herald reported the Justice Department charged Castro in May with murder and conspiracy to kill, and that he was the head of Cuba's armed forces during the shootdown. NBC 6 reported the federal indictment, announced May 20, also charges Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, Emilio Jose Palacio Blanco, Jose Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raul Simanca Cardenas, and Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez with four counts of murder, two counts of destruction of aircraft, and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. NBC 6 reported those five were the pilots allegedly involved, and that Castro was defense minister at the time. The Herald reported that until this 30th-anniversary year, the nearest earlier U.S. case was a 2003 federal indictment of a Cuban general and two fighter pilots. Fox News reported that the attorney general's Office of Statewide Prosecution will take the multi-circuit state conspiracy case, and that the warrant says Florida will seek full extradition if Castro is arrested outside the state.

Fox News reported, before the Monday event, that Gov. Ron DeSantis was expected to address the warrant at a morning press conference. WPBF reported Monday morning that Uthmeier would be joined by DeSantis and Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz. NBC 6 reported Sunday that an earlier advisory had included the governor and that the event itself would be led by Uthmeier. After the event, NBC 6 and CBS News Miami reported that Uthmeier announced the state charge Monday morning at Florida International University. CBS News Miami quoted him: "Raúl Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop pursuing accountability for that communist conspiracy." The statement CBS News Miami published also said spies in Florida communities fed intelligence to Havana and helped put the pilots in the path of Cuban MiGs, and named Costa, Morales, de la Peña, and Alejandre. The accounts reviewed after the news conference quote Uthmeier. They do not include remarks from DeSantis. Fox News reported that the Cuban government has rejected the U.S. prosecution of Castro, maintaining that Brothers to the Rescue repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and that Cuba acted in defense of its sovereignty. The warrant is the charge. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.