Brothers to the Rescue Explained: The 1996 Cuba Shootdown Behind the Case That Could Bring Raúl Castro to the U.S. Justice System

José Basulto, president of the Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue, stands beside a small plane 03 August 2006 in Miami, which was used to assist Cuban rafters fleeing the communist island nation. Basulto, who has been accused of violating Cuban airspace on numerous occasions and is said to have dropped anti-Fidel Castro leaflets over Havana, no longer flies on these missions. On 24 February 1996 Cuban airforce MiGs shot two of the unarmed rescue aircrafts killing its occupants. (Credit: Roberto SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

MIAMI — Before Brothers to the Rescue became the center of a possible U.S. criminal case against Raúl Castro, it was a volunteer group of Cuban exile pilots scanning the Florida Straits for people who might otherwise disappear at sea.

The organization, known in Spanish as Hermanos al Rescate, was founded in Miami in 1991 by Cuban exile pilot José Basulto. Its first mission was humanitarian: flying small civilian aircraft over the waters between Cuba and Florida to spot rafters fleeing the island and alert rescue authorities. In the early 1990s, as Cuba's economy collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union, thousands of Cubans tried to reach the United States in improvised boats, inner tubes, and handmade rafts.