CNN obtained the audio recorded inside the only aircraft that managed to escape the attack in 1996.
14ymedio, Havana, July 3, 2026 – Cubans had already heard the celebration of the military pilots who, on February 24, 1996, had just destroyed an unarmed civilian aircraft carrying defenseless people. “We blew their balls off!” one of them shouted after firing his missiles at a Brothers to the Rescue Cessna, as if he had shot down an enemy bomber and not a small aircraft over international waters.
Now, a recording released by CNN en Español allows the crime to be heard from the other side. Not from the cockpit of the MiG fighter jets, but from the aircraft flown by José Basulto, the only one of the three Brothers to the Rescue planes that managed to return to Florida. The tape, preserved for three decades in a collection of videos and cassettes belonging to former pilot Reinaldo Martín, recorded the communications and the fear inside the aircraft while the other two were being destroyed.
“This is gold,” Martín says as he shows CNN the cassette recorded aboard Basulto’s aircraft, whose call sign was Seagull 1. The recording also captures Carlos Costa, identified as Seagull Charlie, and Mario Manuel de la Peña, Seagull Mike. “It gives you goosebumps to hear it,” Martín admits while listening to one of the voices.
“They are going to shoot us down,” the pilot is heard warning. Then comes the silence
Communications between the MiG fighter jets and the Cuban command post were intercepted by U.S. intelligence services. Three days after the attack, on February 27, 1996, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright made a transcript public and presented it as proof that the Cuban military knew they were attacking civilian aircraft and celebrated their destruction. “This isn’t guts, it’s cowardice,” Albright declared before the Security Council.
A decade later, Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio Isla revealed another decisive recording of the attack. Published in El Nuevo Herald in August 2006, the tape captured a meeting in which Raúl Castro acknowledged that he had authorized several generals to shoot down the aircraft without waiting for approval. “Shoot them down over the sea when they show up, and don’t ask,” he is heard saying. Cancio verified the authenticity of the voice with specialists and with Alcibíades Hidalgo, Raúl Castro’s former personal secretary.
However, until now, the tape containing the audio recorded from the victims’ cockpit had never been released. Costa was piloting one of the Cessnas with Pablo Morales, while De la Peña flew the other with Armando Alejandre Jr. aboard. All four were killed when the Cuban fighter jets fired air-to-air missiles at the aircraft.
The microphone connected to Basulto’s headset captures the confusion and panic inside the cockpit. “They are going to shoot us down,” the pilot is heard warning. Then comes silence. “Charlie,” Basulto calls, trying to reach Costa’s aircraft. But there is no response. “Mike,” he insists. No one answers.
“This is the first time I have heard Basulto’s recording saying that we are next, that they are going to shoot at us”
“Both are down. They shot down both aircraft,” Martín explains during the report. By then, the Cessnas had been obliterated, and their wreckage had fallen into the Florida Straits.
An investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization concluded that both aircraft were destroyed outside Cuban airspace. The first was about 18 miles from the coast and the second more than 30 miles away, while Cuba’s territorial limit was 12 miles. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also determined that the victims were given no warning that would have allowed them to land or leave the area.
The new recording also captures the reaction of Sylvia Iriondo, who was a passenger aboard Basulto’s aircraft and survived because the third plane managed to escape. “This is the first time I have heard Basulto’s recording saying that we are next, that they are going to shoot at us,” Iriondo tells CNN. For her, what happened leaves no room for nuance or euphemisms: “They fired on unarmed, defenseless civilian aircraft in international airspace.”
“We are next,” Basulto warns. “The other one destroyed. The other one destroyed,” is heard afterward
CNN recalls that the families had already heard other recordings of the attack, some provided by the FBI and others played during federal court proceedings. But the cassette found in Martín’s archive preserves something different: the crew’s final communications and the moment those aboard the third aircraft realized they could be the next victims.
“We are next,” Basulto warns. “The other one destroyed. The other one destroyed,” is heard afterward. The victims were Carlos Costa, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran; 24-year-old Mario Manuel de la Peña; Armando Alejandre Jr., born in New Jersey and a father; and Pablo Morales, a former Cuban rafter who had previously been rescued by Brothers to the Rescue. Three were U.S. citizens, and the fourth was a legal resident.
For Mirta Méndez, a relative of one of the victims, the indictment recently filed in the United States against Raúl Castro and several Cuban military officers cannot become just another symbolic gesture. “We cannot have an indictment that remains locked away in a drawer,” she says.
When CNN asks how she imagines Raúl Castro appearing before the courts at the age of 94, she replies: “It doesn’t matter. He is still active and giving orders. So if he can’t walk, then in a wheelchair; if he can’t sit, then on a stretcher.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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