The former Cuban president Raúl Castro publicly reappeared amid rumors about his health condition. Castro appeared on Saturday at an event for the 65th anniversary of the Personal Security Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba.
Cuban state television broadcast images of Castro, who is 95 years old, participating in the ceremony alongside the current president Miguel Díaz-Canel and his grandson Raúl Rodríguez Castro.
The appearance of the former leader came after various rumors circulated during the week about complications in his health.
At the ceremony, the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Álvarez, read a letter from Raúl Castro, in which he highlighted the work of the National Security Directorate and remembered the 32 Cuban officials from that department who died on January 3 trying to protect the former Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, when he was detained by U.S. military forces.
Subsequently, Raúl Castro spoke at the close of the event, stating that “this meeting has been very moving for me. To express all the affection I feel for you as family, as a brother. And despite having been monitored for more than half of my life, to give from the bottom of my heart my thanks.”
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On May 20, the United States Department of Justice formally charged Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens, destruction of aircraft, and murder.
The criminal charges that the Department of Justice filed against Castro and others are the result of a legal process that has been underway for more than 30 years, in which Miami federal prosecutors first drafted a formal indictment against him in the 1990s.
The accusations focus on Castro’s role as Minister of the Armed Forces and his alleged involvement in the 1996 shootdown order of two civilian planes belonging to the Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue.
Four people, three of them Americans, died in the attack carried out in 1996 by two Cuban MiG fighters in international airspace.
