The activist Yeilis Torres Cruz, who fled Cuba in May 2022 and was imprisoned in the United States, received political asylum on Tuesday. She confirmed to this newspaper her mother, Marisol Cruz Zaldívar, after the activist received the verdict in the last session of the court that she had to decide her fate.
“I am very content and happy, because the odyssey that my daughter has lived through all these months is finally coming to an end,” Cruz told 14ymedio by telephone, and recalled: “April 11 was exactly eleven months since he left home. Seven months at the Guantanamo naval base and almost four months in that prison.”
Yeilis Torres was admitted to an immigration detention center in Broward County, South Florida, last December, after being transferred from the US naval base in Guantanamo. She landed there the month of May before along with 21 other Cubans when the Coast Guard intercepted the raft in which they tried to escape from the Island.
In November, her husband, Pavel Pérez, explained to Radio and Television Martí that Torres was “in a migratory limbo” and that in Guantanamo he had a very rigorous disciplinary regime: “They have restrictions on free mobility, they lack internet access and they must go with an escort to the nearest beach.”
Already in the Florida detention center, the activist sent a message to her husband in which she assured that she would rather die than return to Cuba.
“I am very content and happy, because the odyssey that my daughter has lived through all these months is finally coming to an end”
Weeks before her departure from the island, Torres Cruz was declared free without charge. after almost a year under instruction for the crime of assault after being attacked by the official announcer Humberto López.
According to a document that the activist shared at the time in their social networksthe Havana Provincial Prosecutor’s Office determined that it was not necessary to submit his case to the Court, although he was fined 3,000 pesos.
“I am not satisfied with the fine they gave me,” argued the opposition, former Supreme Court prosecutor and member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), in a live broadcast, because paying it implied acknowledging “that I committed a crime, which I did not commit, but now, it is preferable to be free than to be in prison”.
Torres Cruz spent ten months in jail during the criminal proceedings, after being accused of attack in May 2021 by Lieutenant Colonel Kenia Morales, of State Security, according to she told this newspaper herself.
On the street, he had rebuked the presenter Humberto López, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, who aggressively tried to take away the phone with which he was filming him. The activist found out about the accusation when she went to the Police unit to denounce López for assault.
In Cuba, Torres Cruz has two children, a 16-year-old teenager and a seven-year-old boy, in charge of Marisol Cruz, who hopes that she can join them soon. “I am their mother and I am the grandmother of their children and I would give my life for them, but I’m not that young, and I think I don’t have that much time left to be able to put up with this, in addition to the suffering I’ve been through all this time,” told this newspaper. “I always ask God to give me health at least until he can put his children in his hands.”
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio He is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for accompanying us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our newspaper. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
