US charges Cuba's Castro with murder over downing of planes

The United States (US) has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes over the 1996 downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida, reports BBC.
The case unveiled on Wednesday accuses Castro and five others in the shooting down of the aircraft belonging to Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four people, including three Americans.
Castro, now 94, was then head of the country's armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.
As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba's communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges "a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation".
Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
"The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens," Blanche said.
The charges must be argued in a US court, with some carrying the possibility life terms. The murder charges each carry a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment.
The justice department's new charges take aim at a key figurehead of Cuba's communist leadership when it is facing intense US pressure to make significant political and economic reforms to its one-party rule there.
"I think the strategy is to increase the pressure gradually to the point where the Cuban government will give in and surrender at the bargaining table," said William LeoGrande, a expert on Latin American politics at American University.
AFP adds, China said it supported Cuba and urged the United States to "stop brandishing the judicial stick" against the country, after Washington indicted the Caribbean island's former leader Raúl Castro on murder charges.
The US charges against the 94-year-old former president -- announced Wednesday -- fuelled speculation that President Donald Trump will try to topple the communist state.