Russia slams Florida arrest warrant for Cuba’s Raul Castro

MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Moscow on Tuesday slammed a Florida arrest warrant issued for former Cuban president Raul Castro under state murder charges, denouncing the accusations against him as "baseless and contrived". Raul Castro, 95, is wanted on murder charges connected to the February 24, 1996, shooting down of two civilian aircraft from "Brothers to the Rescue," an organisation assisting Cubans fleeing to Florida by sea. "Raul Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop pursuing accountability for that communist conspiracy," Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement. Castro, brother of the late revolutionary leader and United States (US) nemesis Fidel Castro, was indicted on federal charges related to the incident in May. Russia, a close ally of Cuba since the Soviet era, said in a statement that it "categorically rejected and strongly condemned" the Florida arrest warrant, and reaffirmed Moscow's "unwavering solidarity" with the island nation. "Bringing a baseless and contrived accusation more than 30 years after the events can only be seen as an act of vengeance by the anti-Cuban lobby in Miami," its foreign ministry charged. The Florida arrest warrant came as President Donald Trump's right-wing administration steadily ramped up economic, political and legal pressure on the Cuban communist government. Trump previously seized on a US indictment to justify military action in January that toppled Venezuela's then-president Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of the Cuban authorities. Current Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said the US federal indictment against Castro has "no legal basis" and was an attempt "to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba."