Cuban pilot involved in 1996 plane shoot down sentenced to prison term

The courts sentenced Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez on Thursday to seven months in prison for immigration fraud. Gonzalez-Pardo is a retired Cuban army pilot, linked to the downing of NGO planes in 1996 for which the former president Raul Castro has just been charged.

A federal court in Jacksonville, Florida sentenced the former Cuban military officer for lying when he applied for permanent residency in the United States in April 2025, months after his arrival in the U.S. country under a humanitarian parole, local media reported.

Gonzalez-Pardo, 65, claimed then that he had not received any military training or served in the military, despite having been in the Cuban Air Force from 1980 to 2009, according to the indictment.

This former pilot, who has been in jail for more than six months, must serve another 10 days for this conviction, although he now faces a much more serious charge in a Florida federal court.

On May 20, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged Gonzalez-Pardo with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens for his involvement in the Cuban operation that brought down two planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue organization in 1996 and killed their four crew members.

Along with him, Raul Castro, former leader of Cuba's communist regime, as well as three other pilots in the operation and an intelligence officer, were indicted.

The charges against Castro, 94, amount to another twist in Washington's heavy-handed pressure on the island.

It is the first time that the U.S. justice system has charged a high-ranking Cuban government official, in this case, the brother of Fidel Castro, the historic leader of the 1959 revolution.

On February 24, 1996, MiG fighter jets chased and shot down two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes, which were trying to help rafters reach Florida from the island.

A third aircraft, carrying the organization's leader, Jose Basulto, narrowly escaped.