Live updates: DOJ indictment of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former leader

Isabel Rosales interviews former Brothers to the Rescue pilot Reinaldo Martin

Isabel Rosales interviews former Brothers to the Rescue pilot Reinaldo Martin

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For Reinaldo Martin, a former pilot with Brothers to the Rescue, the indictment of several people in connection to the shootdown of two of the group’s planes in 1996 was a long time coming.

“It’s hard because we’ve been working on this a while since it happened and I think we (are) finally coming around to getting it done,” he told CNN.

Former Cuban President Raúl Castro was one of the people charged in the now-unsealed indictment. He is charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of an aircraft, and murder.

Four people, three of them Americans, were killed in the attack. Martin said he was good friends with two of the people who died, and he himself was supposed to be flying that day. He said former President Raúl Castro “should have been in jail 30 years ago.”

As he listened to a news conference by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the criminal charges this afternoon, Martin shouted, “Finally!”

“We were in international waters, they had no right to come out and shoot us down the way he did,” Martin said.

Martin remembers his friends as “humanitarians who had big hearts,” getting emotional as he flips through photos. “We did a lot of things, a lot of good things, and that’s how I remember them,” he said.

But, for Martin, the indictment is just the beginning. He said he wants the people of Cuba to realize that Brothers to the Rescue was there to help and that there are more changes that need to happen moving forward.

“This sends a message that we need to free Cuba and let the Cubans decide just like we do here in the United States, the freedom to vote, elect who we want down there, and that’s the way it should be. Not the way it’s been for 67 years,” Martin said.