US charges Cuba's Raúl Castro with murder over 1996 downing of two planes

The US has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes over the downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida in 1996.

The case unveiled on Wednesday – a revival of charges originally from 2003 – accuses Castro and five others of shooting down aircraft belonging to Cuban American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four people, including three Americans.

Castro, now 94, was the head of the country's armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.

As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba's communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges "a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation".

Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.

"The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens," Blanche said.

The justice department's new charges take aim at a key figurehead of Cuba's communist leadership when it is facing intense US pressure to make significant political and economic reforms to its one-party rule there.

"I think the strategy is to increase the pressure gradually to the point where the Cuban government will give in and surrender at the bargaining table," said Wiliam LeoGrand, a expert on Latin American politics at American University.

The US has issued sanctions on the country and imposed a blockade on oil to Cuba that has resulted in blackouts and food shortages.

Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a message to the Cuban people timed to the country's independence day.

"President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba," Rubio said.

Rubio told citizens of the island that a Cuban military-run conglomerate known as GAESA is primarily responsible for the blackouts and food shortages that the country continues to endure.

GAESA owns or operates most of the lucrative parts of the Cuban economy from the ports to the petrol pumps to 5-star hotels.

In response to Rubio's message, Díaz-Canel accused the US of lying and imposing a collective punishment on the Cuban people.

Díaz-Canel also said that the indictment of Castro was being used to "justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba" and accused the US of distorting the facts around the downing of the plane.

He claimed that Cuba acted in "legitimate self-defence within its jurisdictional waters".

Asked by reporters about the prospects of bringing Castro to the US to face charges, Blanche responded that there was a warrant for his arrest.

"We expect he will show up here, by his own will or another way," he said.