Former Cuban President Raul Castro was indicted on Wednesday for allegedly shooting down two civilian planes in 1996, killing four people, reigniting scrutiny of former President Barack Obama’s highly publicized 2016 trip to Havana.
“President Obama’s approach to Cuba is more than a policy mistake. It is a diplomatic disaster — naive at best, incompetent at worst, and deeply disrespectful of the dissidents, political prisoners and victims who suffered under the Castro regime,” Francisco Suarez, a Cuban American and former mayor of Miami, told Fox Digital News.
“Obama viewed normalization as enlightened diplomacy. It provided legitimacy to a brutal dictatorship while asking for little in return,” the Fox News contributor said. “The administration reopened relations, loosened restrictions and delivered a public relations victory to Havana, but the Cuban people remain trapped under the same repressive system and the United States has not obtained any meaningful security concessions.”
The U.S. Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment on Wednesday charging Castro and five co-defendants with the deaths of four U.S. citizens on two unarmed civilian planes operated by the Miami-based exile group. Cuban-American critics say the charges underscore longstanding opposition to Obama’s push to normalize ties, which they say gives legitimacy to Castro’s regime.
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In 2016, Obama and his family traveled to Cuba for bilateral talks on human rights and economic issues.
(Getty Images)
Obama visited Cuba in 2016 as part of his administration’s push to normalize relations with the country after decades of hostility, arguing that engagement on diplomacy, economics and human rights is more effective than isolation. The visit also included Obama and Castro attending a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team in Havana.
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“I’m here to bury the last vestiges of the Cold War in America,” Obama said that year in Havana. “I’m here to extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people.”
After the indictment was released, photos of Obama and Castro embracing during a 2016 trip to Havana quickly resurfaced online, going viral on social media and triggering a wave of criticism from users who blasted the former president for his relationship with the communist leader.
“Raoul harbors American terrorists like Joanne Chesimard and Guillermo Morales. Disgusting,” Fox News contributor Paul Mauro wrote on X.
Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn wrote in The X: “Barack Obama is good with communists and criminals.”
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Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz retweeted a photo with a cringe emoji.
Castro, 94, is the younger brother of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Raul Castro served as President of Cuba from 2008 to 2018.
Suarez said Obama’s Cuba policy was not only a human rights failure but also a national security failure because he failed to recognize the serious threat posed by the regime.
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Photos of Obama and Raul Castro attending a baseball game in Havana have resurfaced after the U.S. Department of Justice released the indictment against Castro.
“It does nothing to diminish Cuba’s role as a base for America’s enemies. It does nothing to counter the island’s use as an intelligence and espionage platform so close to our shores. It does nothing to reduce the Cuban regime’s support for terrorism. It does nothing to counter Cuba’s narco-state behavior or its destabilizing influence throughout the Western Hemisphere,” Suarez said.
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U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro stand together during Obama’s visit to Cuba.
Obama’s trip comes two decades after the 1996 incident, which became a major flashpoint in U.S.-Cuba relations when the Trump administration took a more open and tough stance toward Cuba.
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“Raul Castro and five co-defendants engaged in a conspiracy that ended with Cuban military aircraft firing missiles at those aircraft and killing four Americans,” Acting Attorney General Todd Branch said Wednesday when announcing the indictment. “A country and its leaders cannot be allowed to target Americans and kill them without accountability.”
On December 2, 1996, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro participated in a parade in Havana, Cuba.
After the indictment was released, Trump said Cuba was “very important.”
“A lot of people are suffering very, very, very much, to a degree that few people can understand. I think the Cuban population in Miami, and certainly outside of Miami,” Trump said. “The people who come in there are devastated, their families are devastated, and they appreciate what the attorney general did today, and he’s doing it right now. He’s just watching this. Our hearts go out to Cuba. Very important.”
Suarez said that for Cuban Americans, Obama’s cozying up to Castro was disrespectful.
“This is about families being torn apart, property being confiscated, voices silenced, dissidents beaten, prisoners of conscience abandoned and generations forced to live in fear. Treating the Castro government as a normal partner without first respecting these victims is not diplomacy,” he said.
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Trump has previously joked that the United States would “take over” Cuba “almost immediately.”
“Cuba has problems. We’ll finish one first. I like finishing a job,” he added this month.
Fox News Digital reached out to Obama’s office and the White House for additional comment on renewed criticism of the trip.
Original source of the article: Obama-Castro baseball game sparks renewed outrage as Trump Justice Department cracks down on Cuban leader
