SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The former Cuban judge Melody Gonzalez Pedrazawho was denied entry into the United States and taken to a detention center, appeared before the U.S. court on July 31 to request political asylum, which she requested upon arriving in that country.
According to the former official’s own statement to the independent media Cuba Diaryappeared before the US court without a lawyer and assumed his own defense.
The hearing, the newspaper reported, was quick and there they asked him about his militancy in the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), his reasons for belonging and whether he continued to be a member of the PCC when he arrived in the United States or had resigned from his membership.
That reason, as he expressed to Cuba Diaryis the main charge against her and is considered “relevant cause for detention and possible deportation.”
This was revealed to him, prior to the trial, by “a kind of assistant social worker,” who told him that his membership in the PCC constituted a serious reason for denying him permission to enter and remain on American soil.
Officials argued that they are the “elite policy of the Cuban Communist Party and all its members who kept millions of Cubans mired in oppression, ever since it was established as the only Party capable of developing methods of repression, the denial of fundamental human rights and freedoms, and with the will to continue trying to destroy the model of democracy established in the United States of America and other Western countries.”
Militancy in the PCC
According to the former judge, she was treated with due respect and was allowed to express everything she wanted about what the PCC means and the demand for militancy from many professionals and people with the capacity to make relevant decisions in Cuba. She also highlighted how “the growing double standards on the Island are nullifying and weakening the formal power that the PCC claims to have.”
“Thousands of good Cubans who have lived in the United States for years were members of the PCC, including members of the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, as well as the official media,” he said.
Gonzalez Pedraza rShe said that the court had collected the evidence offered by the former judge and had been informed of how her request for asylum would be analyzed and of guidelines on basic rights, procedures and form. The next hearing is scheduled for September 25.
The “defense” of the former jurist
Previously, from the Broward Detention Center, the former jurist denounced the Cuban judicial system before the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and asked not to be deported to the Island.
In the letter, to which he had access Cuba DiaryMelody González claims that the judicial system obeys “political decisions” and is at the mercy of external agents such as the Communist Party, the Government and State Security.
“I trust that my voice will be heard and that the Government and system of judges in the United States will not hand me over to death, probable imprisonment and the most humiliating situation. I have declared and remain willing to declare before its structure to clarify and provide the details that are needed for the good of the mission that justice must play in Cuba, and I trust that I will not be returned to the tyrannical hands of those who demand my head,” she wrote in her petition to the UN.
Gonzalez Pedraza condemned for an alleged crime of attacking four young people and subsequently emigrated to the United States. He received his parole on May 10, and on May 11, his travel permit. He informed his boss of his trip and was immediately suspended from his employment.
The sentence against the four boys was handed down on May 8 and ordered imprisonment of up to four years for three of them, and three years for another.
The Provincial People’s Court of Villa Clara admitted the appeal of the sentence handed down against Andy Gabriel González Fuentes, Adain Barreiro Pérez, Eddy Daniel Rodríguez Milián and Luis Ernesto Medina Pedraza.
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