Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel today rejected the United States' accusation against the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro, and asserted that Washington is attempting to discredit a hero of the island.

“The purported accusation against Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, just communicated by the U.S. government, only evinces the arrogance and frustration that the unshakable firmness of the Cuban Revolution and the unity and moral strength of its leadership provoke in the representatives of the empire,” the head of state assured in a message on X.

He likewise pointed out that “this is a political action, without any legal foundation, that only seeks to pad the file they are fabricating to justify the recklessness of a military aggression against Cuba.”

“The United States lies,” he asserted, adding that U.S. authorities are manipulating *“the events surrounding the downing of the planes of the narco-terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996.”*

Díaz-Canel specified that “there is more than enough documentary evidence” to ensure that “there was no imprudent action nor violation of international law, unlike what U.S. military forces have been doing with their coldly calculated and openly publicized extrajudicial executions on civilian vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific.”

According to him, *“on February 24, 1996, Cuba acted in legitimate self-defense, within its jurisdictional waters, following successive and dangerous violations of our airspace by notorious terrorists, about which the then U.S. administration was alerted on more than a dozen occasions but ignored the warnings and allowed the violations.”*

“The ethical stature and humanist sense of his work demolish any infamy that may be raised against Army General Raúl Castro,” he asserted, emphasizing that the Cuban revolutionary leader, “as a guerrilla leader and as a statesman, won the love of his people, to which is added the respect and admiration of other leaders from the region and the world.”

“Those values are his best defense and a moral shield against the ridiculous attempt to diminish his stature as a hero,” the Cuban president stated.