To the Cuban pilot Rubén Martínez Machado, who escaped from Cuba on October 21 in a Russian Antonov plane, he was granted political asylum in the United States. “We won. They gave my client asylum,” lawyer Eduardo Soto reported Thursday. “There was no appeal reservation so it stays here.”
Martínez, 29 years old and detained until now at the Broward Transitional Center, a facility in Florida of Immigration and Customs Control of the United States (ICE), was at a court hearing this Thursday and after the resolution in favor, it is expected that be released this Friday, public Telemundo 51. In one year and one day, Martínez Machado will be able to apply for permanent residence through the Cuban Adjustment Act.
The Cuban said that he used the plane he was flying, belonging to the National Air Services Company, to leave the island and flew from the province of Sancti Spíritus, in central Cuba, to land at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. , located in the Florida Everglades wetland.
Shortly after landing after an hour’s journey, Martínez Machado was placed at the disposal of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) government office.
His future was uncertain after the judge denied him bail to be released on the grounds that he had stolen the plane in which he arrived in Florida. In this context, the pilot’s lawyer filed an appeal.
Rubén Martínez declared that the plane was only “a means” to leave the island, and that 12 days were enough for him to plan the maneuver
During the hearing on November 10, before a US prosecutor for the crime of “robbing an aircraft,” Martínez declared that the plane was only “a means” to leave the island, and that 12 days were enough for him to plan the maneuver. .
Martinez stressed that he had managed to raise the equivalent of 3,000 dollars to legally leave Cuba for Spain, but that after the monetary change brought by the Ordering Task, his savings were reduced to 1,500, according to his calculations.
That day he insisted that he made the decision to bet his life “to be free, that is still at stake.” During the process, the Cuban’s lawyer commented that his client “is happy to have arrived in the country of freedoms.”
In mid-November, when the US Government was trying to move the plane in which Martínez traveled, the aircraft crashed in the Everglades, west of Miami-Dade, Florida. Federal authorities said then that it was operated by two “government-contracted pilots” who were in the process of moving the plane to another location, about which they offered no details.
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