Thousands of Cubans poured onto the Malecón seawall in Havana on May 22 to show their firm unity in defending their former president Raúl Castro after the recent indictment against him by the US Trump regime on murder charges. They denounced the US threat to put Castro on trial “willingly or by other means.”

Cubans fear the US is preparing to kidnap Castro through direct military intervention. This mirrors the US kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January.

According to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the indictment is “a political action with no legal basis.” Its sole purpose is to “pad the fabricated case (against Castro) to justify the foolishness of a military intervention against Cuba.”

The case stemmed from the U.S. Department of Justice’s accusation that Castro, serving as Cuba’s minister of defense in 1996, personally approved the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by the group Brothers to the Rescue. Four men died in the shootdown, three of them US citizens.

Díaz-Canel said the US is “lying and twisting” history. He said the 1996 actions were a “legal act of self-defense” against the repeated and dangerous violations of Cuba’s airspace by dissident groups set up and funded by the US. Cuba clarified that it had repeatedly warned those groups prior to the incident not to violate the country’s airspace.

Cuba also called the indictment of Castro “utter hypocrisy” in light of the US carrying out extrajudicial bombings of civilian ships in the Caribbean and Pacific accused of involvement in illegal drug smuggling.

Díaz-Canel and other officials denounced calls for Cuban citizens to “embrace a new path” and overthrow the current regime. For Cuba, these provocations, together with the oil blockade, are a form of “collective punishment” and genocide against the Cuban people.

At the protest, people waved Cuban flags and chanted slogans such as “Patria o muerte, ¡venceremos!” (Motherland or death, we will prevail!) and “Manos fuera de Cuba” (“Hands off Cuba”) against the looming US military aggression.