LatinNews Daily - 20 October 2026

*Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez has condemned as a “new futile manoeuvre” an arrest warrant issued for Cuba’s former president Raúl Castro (2008-2018) yesterday by the US attorney general for Florida, James Uthmeier. The Florida state arrest warrant is over the deadly ​1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), which killed three US citizens and one US national, in relation to which Castro was charged in May by the US Department of Justice. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), the state arrest warrant charges Castro with one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Last year, in relation to the case, Uthmeier ordered state authorities to reopen the investigation into Castro who was defence minister at the time of the 1996 shootdown. Writing on social media, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel described the arrest warrant as a “despicable action against the Army General… in a pathetic Miami circus, with electoral motives”, adding that “it does not have - and will never have - the slightest legal or practical sense”. It comes as Washington continues to apply a maximum pressure campaign to the island, aimed at forcing its economic and political opening, and ahead of the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote on a resolution calling for an end to the US embargo on the island, which historically has passed by a wide margin in favour of Cuba, and is scheduled for 28 October.