Former Cuban President Raúl Castro faces further charges in Florida linked to the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles, after the U.S. government indicted the former leader earlier this year.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday accused Castro, 95, of directing spies to infiltrate the exile group Brothers to the Rescue and of ordering the attack on their planes.

The state charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder rests largely on a federal indictment announced in May that included charges of murder and destruction of an airplane.

It remains uncertain whether Castro will ever set foot in a U.S. courtroom.

Uthmeier stated that the arrest warrant will restrict Castro's ability to leave the island nation and prevent him from traveling to any location that maintains an extradition agreement with the United States.

“I’m well aware that Raúl Castro is an elderly man who is presumably not intent on marching himself into Miami,” Uthmeier said.

“I think others would get to him before the court of law would, but at the end of the day, we stand ready to prosecute the case.”

According to the state complaint, Castro was Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and First Vice President of Cuba when he gave the final authorization to shoot down the planes.

An investigator said that Cuban Directorate of Intelligence agents, operating as part of the Wasp Network in the Miami area and the Florida Keys, had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and reported flight plans.

On Feb. 24, 1996, three unarmed Cessna aircraft departed Opa-Locka Airport in Miami-Dade County.

Well beyond Cuba's territorial waters, Cuban MiGs destroyed two of the civilian planes with air-to-air missiles, killing the four occupants, the complaint said.

Both aircraft were traveling away from Cuba and received no warning despite contact with Havana air traffic control, U.S. officials said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described the federal indictment issued earlier this year as a political stunt aimed solely at “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”

He accused the United States of lying and of manipulating the events surrounding the shootdown.

“Our historic federal indictment laid the groundwork, and James and his team have now taken the important step of bringing charges under Florida law,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said at a news conference.

Castro assumed the presidency from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro in 2006, before ceding power to a trusted loyalist, Díaz-Canel, in 2018.

Although he retired in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, a perception reinforced by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently threatened military action against Cuba ever since U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Cuban government's longstanding patron.

Following the ousting of the Venezuelan leader earlier this year, the White House ordered a blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, resulting in severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.