“We expect that he will show up here by his own will or by another way and go to prison,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a news conference in Miami attended by cheering Cuban-Americans.
Trump previously seized on a US domestic indictment to justify military action in January that toppled and seized Venezuela’s then president Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of the Cuban authorities.
Trump hailed the indictment as a “very big moment” but played down prospects of taking action against Cuba, whose economy has been in deepening crisis for months.
“There won’t be escalation. I don’t think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart. It’s a mess, and they sort of lost control,” Trump told reporters.
But Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the US action “no legal basis.”
The charges aim to “add to the file they are fabricating to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba,” he wrote on X.
Five other Cubans were also charged, including the air force pilots who shot down the planes.
Four people died in the 1996 incident, sending relations plummeting. Two decades later, Raul Castro joined then US president Barack Obama in an effort to reconcile.
Trump reversed Obama’s effort to improve relations and has been steadily tightening sanctions on the island, already under a US embargo almost continuously since the communist revolution.
