India, May 21 -- On the afternoon of February 24, 1996, eight volunteers boarded three small Cessna planes at an airport north of Miami. Only one plane made it back. Three decades later, the United States has finally charged the man many believe gave the order to kill them.

The four men who died that day were not soldiers. They were volunteers, a Vietnam veteran, a young student pilot, a Miami-born rescue flyer and a man who had once been rescued from the sea himself.

Carlos Alberto Costa, 29, was born in Miami Beach. He had flown more than 140 rescue missions searching for Cuban rafters lost in the Florida Straits. His older sister, Mirta Mendez had warned him to stop flying. "His words to me were: 'I am an American citizen. I do not b...