China consistently opposes abuse of judicial means to pressure Cuba: FM on Florida arrest warrant for Cuban leader Raul Castro

China consistently opposes the abuse of judicial means to pressure Cuba and firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its sovereignty against foreign interference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday when asked to comment on US state of Florida issuing arrest warrant for Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Describing Castro as a highly respected Cuban revolutionary leader with great international prestige, Mao said "We noted that Cuba's president and foreign minister had condemned the US move as a senseless legal ploy."

The spokesperson urged the US to immediately end its blockade of Cuba and all forms of coercion and pressure, and stop violating the Cuban people's rights to subsistence and development.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday announced that state authorities had secured an arrest warrant for Castro on a charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in connection with the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft.

Castro, 95, was Cuba's minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces at the time of the shootdown, which Havana says took place in Cuban airspace and in self-defense.

"This reprehensible action against the Army General in a pathetic Miami circus, with an electoral backdrop, has no, nor will it ever have, the slightest legal sense and even less practical sense," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez said in a post on social media platform X.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez also condemned the move in a post on X, calling it a "new sterile maneuver by the anti-Cuban politicians of South Florida against Army General Raul Castro Ruz, which they have combined with other hackneyed and baseless accusations against Cuba."

Rodriguez said the measure only reflected "the political rot and moral collapse of a group of parasites who deceive and swindle their followers, keeping them contributing through fundraising and financial support."