A onetime Cuban military pilot facing a killing-conspiracy charge with former Cuban President Raul Castro was essentially sentenced to time served on an immigration-records charge May 28 in Jacksonville.
“The new charge is the new charge. You’ll have to face that down in Miami,” U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger told Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 65, who had been behind bars since being charged in November with making false statements on an immigration document. He pleaded guilty in February.
Berger sentenced Rodriguez to seven months in prison, a month longer than advisory sentencing guidelines recommended and 10 days short of the period he had already been locked up.
A judge in Miami on May 20 unsealed an April indictment charging Rodriguez, Castro and four others with conspiring to kill U.S. nationals when Cuban fighter jets in 1996 shot down two planes operated by an anti-Castro South Florida nonprofit, Brothers to the Rescue.
The indictment said Rodriguez, who piloted MiG fighter jets during a 30-year military career, pursued a third Brothers to the Rescue aircraft “with the intent of destroying that aircraft,” but did not shoot it down.
Castro was Cuba’s president from 2008 to 2018 and in 1996 had been its defense minister under his late brother Fidel’s government for many years.
Four people, including three American citizens, were killed in the 1996 shootdowns. The indictment charges pilots who acted under orders to destroy the Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters as conspirators with Castro, who remains free in Cuba.
Rodriguez came to Florida in 2024 but replied “no” when he completed a form that asked whether he had served in the military. That was the basis for his immigration charge, which carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Defense attorney Miguel Rosada told the judge in a sentencing memo that Rodriguez first entered the United States in 2016 and did report his military experience at that time.
Rodriguez briefly spoke through an interpreter, telling Berger he had “complete regret” for his actions and had no complaints about his treatment by U.S. marshals or during the court process.
Rodriguez would be turned over to the marshals, would have an initial appearance on the new indictment and would be transferred to Miami to face charges there, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Corsmeier told Berger.
Convicted of a felony after the immigration sentencing, he would also be subject to deportation once he’s eventually released by the legal system.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Castro’s co-defendant in Jacksonville bound for Miami for new case
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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