MIAMI — The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are expected to announce an indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro on Wednesday at the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami. The announcement is expected to come in conjunction with a ceremony to honor victims of the Brothers to the Rescue murders of 1996.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will headline the event along with FBI co-deputy Director Christopher Raia, the U.S. attorney from Miami, and Sen. Ashley Moody. A grand jury returned the indictment after hearing evidence in the case against Castro.

Raúl Castro and Fidel Castro were accused of ordering the Cuban Air Force to shoot down two civilian planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a group founded in the early 1990s that flew small civilian planes from a Miami-area airport to search for people fleeing Cuba. The organization conducted search-and-rescue flights over the waters between Florida and Cuba, aiding thousands of people who fled Cuba on makeshift vessels.

According to declassified records, federal officials warned Brothers to the Rescue in January 1996 that one day the Cubans might shoot down one of the group's planes. According to an International Civil Aviation Organization report, three of the group's planes, carrying eight people in total, departed from Opa Locka Airport just after 1 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996. Shortly before 3 p.m., a Brothers to the Rescue pilot radioed Havana air traffic controllers to say his plane was crossing into Cuba's air defense identification zone.

Less than half an hour after that radio call, one of the group's Cessnas was destroyed by a Cuban-operated MiG-29 fighter jet, killing one U.S. citizen and one green card holder. A second Brothers to the Rescue plane was destroyed moments later, killing two American citizens. A Cuban pilot was recorded using a vulgarity to declare that the downed aircraft would no longer interfere, followed by the phrase "Fatherland or death," according to the ICAO report. The third plane landed safely in Florida.

The ICAO investigation concluded that the planes were shot down over international waters, several miles outside Cuban airspace, and that international law bars countries from firing at civilian planes, even inside their own airspace. The investigation also found that Cuba did not attempt less drastic measures, such as communicating with the planes via radio or guiding them out of Cuban airspace.

Castro stepped down as president in 2018 and as secretary of the Communist Party in 2021. President Donald Trump began focusing on Cuba's communist regime at the beginning of the year. The Trump administration implemented economic sanctions on Cuba and threatened potential military action against the country.