Cuba shared a pointed warning to the US on Saturday that it had “full and exclusive sovereignty” over the airspace above the communist island nation.
The message appeared to be an attempt to deter a Venezuela-style military operation to bring former Cuban President Raúl Castro, who was indicted on murder charges by a US federal jury on Wednesday, to justice.
“Every state has full and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory,” the Cuban Embassy to the US wrote on X Saturday, sharing a message from the Cuban Civil Aviation Institute, citing the Chicago Convention signed in 1944 to ensure air commerce could resume after the war.
The warning added Cuba “exercises absolute control” not only on the airspace above its territory, but also above the adjacent waters, and that foreign military aircraft “need express authorization to fly over another territory.”
Castro, who is Fidel Castro’s brother, was charged, along with five others, to conspiring to kill US nationals, two counts of destruction of aircraft and four counts of murder, for directing the Feb. 24, 1996, shootdown of planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an exile-run humanitarian group.
His indictment was followed by calls from the likes of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), whose own mother fled communist Cuba, for the feds to do to the 94-year-old ex-communist leader what it did to Venezuelan despot Nicólas Maduro.
Maduro was captured in January, along with his wife Cilia Flores, from his Caracas compound and flown to the US, where he was taken to a Brooklyn prison — the same day a new superseding indictment on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges was unsealed.
Cuban observers have said such a high-stakes incursion might not be necessary in Cuba given Castro’s advanced age.
“Raúl Castro is 94 years old. It might not be worth the trouble,” Christine Balling, a Cuba expert at the Institute of World Politics, told Fox News Digital.
Balling argued the indictment was rather about sending “a very straightforward message that we are 100% behind the fall of the Castro regime.”
“I don’t think that we are necessarily going to conduct the same operation.”
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