5 things to know about the Raúl Castro indictment and the Cuba crisis

The United States on Wednesday indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges including murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens.

Castro, the younger brother of the late Fidel Castro, will turn 95 next month. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday insisted the U.S. expects to take him into custody.

“This isn’t a show indictment,” Blanche told reporters. “We expect that he will show up here by his own will or by another way.”

The remark seemed like a none-too-subtle way to suggest Raúl Castro could suffer a similar fate to Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president who was seized by U.S. forces in Caracas at the start of the year and is being held in New York.

The indictment also comes amid a massive ramping up of U.S. pressure on the Caribbean island where Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 after several years of revolutionary struggle.

The economic situation in Cuba is dire, owing largely to an American blockade. But direct U.S. use of force aimed at toppling the regime would have hard-to-predict consequences. It would also be massively controversial.

Here’s what to know about the Cuba crisis.

The charges date back to deadly 1996 incident

The charges Raúl Castro faces go back to the shooting down of two small planes 30 years ago.

The planes were flown by members of a U.S.-based group, primarily comprised of Cuban exiles, called Brothers to the Rescue. Though the group’s initial aim was to provide humanitarian assistance to people who fled the island, often in makeshift craft bound for Florida, it also was expressly anti-Castro and had at times air-dropped propaganda leaflets over Havana.

In February 1996, two of three small planes on one of the group’s missions were shot down by the Cuban Air Force, resulting in four deaths. Three of those killed........

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