{"id":1644,"date":"2026-05-24T19:37:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T19:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1644"},"modified":"2026-05-24T19:37:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T19:37:32","slug":"cuban-pilot-charged-in-downing-of-planes-lived-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1644","title":{"rendered":"Cuban pilot charged in downing of planes lived in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MIAMI \u2014 For almost 10 years, a retired Cuban air force pilot, Lt. Col Luis Ra\u00fal Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo, traveled between Cuba and Florida, entering the United States without disclosing his military history and going unnoticed.<\/p>\n

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That was until his arrest in November, when he was accused of failing to mention on U.S. immigration forms that he had been a member of the Cuban air force for nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n

He pleaded guilty in January to immigration fraud charges and was scheduled to be sentenced on May 28 in federal court in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo, 65, who is jailed, could receive a maximum sentence of 10 years.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo faced even more serious charges when he was named as a defendant in a federal indictment against former Cuban President Ra\u00fal Castro and four other members of the Cuban air force.<\/p>\n

All are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in a notorious case involving the killing of three Americans and a U.S. resident, all of Cuban descent, who were members of Brothers to the Rescue, a group of pilots that scoured the seas looking for rafters fleeing Cuba.<\/p>\n

All four died in February 1996 when Cuban fighter jets shot down two civilian planes operated by the group over international airspace in the Straits of Florida. A third plane escaped and landed safely in Miami.<\/p>\n

Cuba said the planes had repeatedly violated its airspace and had dropped antiregime leaflets over Havana.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo\u2019s inclusion in the indictment is potentially significant because he is the only defendant in the United States and could testify in a trial.<\/p>\n

If found guilty in the new indictment, Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo faces life in prison.<\/p>\n

His lawyer, Miguel Rosada, declined to comment on any of the charges.<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo flew one of the MiG fighter jets involved in the shoot-down, but did not open fire, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The charges brought a measure of satisfaction to one Cuban activist in South Florida, Luis Dom\u00ednguez, who said he has spent years trying to identify all the Cuban pilots involved in an episode that has been an open wound in the Cuban exile community.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in one of those MiGs that day,\u201d said Dom\u00ednguez, an investigator for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, a group that describes itself as promoting democracy in the island nation. \u201cAnd he\u2019s the only one that\u2019s here that we have access to that can tell you who participated.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

For years, two MiGs had been identified as involved in the shoot-down. In 2003, a U.S. federal court indicted the two pilots and their commanding officer, but they lived in Cuba and were never tried.<\/p>\n

But Dom\u00ednguez said that in 2014 he learned of a report by a U.N. agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, that detailed the involvement of two other MiGs in the chase for the third Cessna that returned to Florida. The Cessna was flown by Jos\u00e9 Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue.<\/p>\n

The report, which is part of the U.N.\u2019s public record, was commissioned in 1996 by the United Nations as part of its examination of the episode.<\/p>\n

The report includes a transcript of radio communications between the MiG pilots and their base.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat was like the Bible to me,\u201d Dom\u00ednguez said.<\/p>\n

The transcript showed that the pilots spotted Basulto\u2019s plane, a light-blue-and-white Cessna.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, I have contact,\u201d one of the pilots, identified as \u201c22,\u201d radioed to his base. But two minutes later, when asked to report, he stated that \u201cwe lost it. Did we pass it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Two minutes after that, the pilots were told to \u201csuspend the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuban authorities later told the civil aviation agency that the mission was aborted because \u201cthe contact was then outside Cuban territorial airspace and withdrawing to the northeast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dom\u00ednguez said the transcripts provided clues about the other pilots in the episode.<\/p>\n

The transcript showed that during the chase one of the pilots used his name, \u201cGual,\u2019\u2019 instead of his military call sign. One of the other pilots indicted on Wednesday is named Jos\u00e9 Fidel Gual Barzaga.<\/p>\n

Armed with the tidbit about \u201cGual,\u2019\u2019 Dom\u00ednguez said he started asking other former Cuban air force pilots who had defected.<\/p>\n

He said he was eventually told that Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo was aboard the second fighter jet that went after Basulto\u2019s plane and that about a decade ago he had traveled to Florida to visit a sister living in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a process,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cIt took a lot of patience.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Dom\u00ednguez said he obtained photos of Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

Court records show Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo first entered the United States in May 2017, when he also failed to disclose his military service in Cuba.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo entered the country again \u201cafter being granted humanitarian parole\u201d under a Biden administration program for migrants, according to his plea agreement in the immigration fraud indictment.<\/p>\n

Dom\u00ednguez said he had reached out to federal authorities to share what he had learned about the Cuban pilots. An FBI spokesperson in Miami, James Marshall, said the agency would not comment on what he said was an ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n

He also said he contacted members of Congress, including then-Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asking how Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo had been allowed to enter the country given his military record.<\/p>\n

In 2024, in a letter to Biden administration officials, four Florida Republican members of Congress, including Rubio, highlighted that Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo was \u201cnotoriously linked\u201d to the Brothers to the Rescue incident in 1996. The representatives also called for an investigation into Gonz\u00e1lez-Pardo\u2019s entry into the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cFormer Cuban regime officials involved in the oppression of innocent Cuban citizens or the transnational persecution of Cuban-Americans\u201d should not be allowed to remain in the United States, they wrote.<\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Cuban pilot charged in the indictment that included former Cuban President Ra\u00fal Castro in the fatal downing of two Brothers to the Rescue planes had lived in Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-florida-news","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCuban pilot charged in downing of planes lived in Florida - Orlando Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1644\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cuban pilot charged in downing of planes lived in Florida - 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