MIAMI, United States. – After 10 months of waiting in a detention center, a United States immigration court granted political asylum to the Cuban opposition member Yeilis Torres Cruz, according to an independent media outlet. CyberCuba attorney Willy Allen.
“It has been a victory achieved after a difficult day in court, but she had a credible and consistent story, and in the end justice has been served,” said the lawyer.
Torres Cruz remained in a South Florida detention center. The opposition member, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) organization, had been detained in the Straits of Florida along with 16 other irregular Cuban immigrants, in May 2022.
The opponent was the only one of the group of rafters who passed the credible fear interview before the authorities and was transferred to the Guantánamo Naval Base (GITMO).
According to Allen’s statements to CyberCubathe value of Torres Cruz’s testimony heard this Tuesday by an immigration judge, “was to explain his life in Cuba and the reasons why he had no other way out than to escape the country on a boat.”
After nine months in prison in Cuba, Torres Cruz was released at the beginning of March 2022. The opponent had been in jail since May 2021, for confronting the official presenter Humberto López.
On Saturday, May 8, 2021, López attacked the UNPACU activist, who discovered him in an alleged infidelity and confronted him when he was leaving a building in Havana.
The meeting with the official spokesperson, who is also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), was broadcast live through the same social network a little earlier.
Torres approached López, at the exit of his alleged lover’s home, and scolded him: “Can you explain to the world why you are here at the house of a loved one having a wife?”
shortly after The agression, CubaNet He contacted Torres Cruz, who asked for support. “The boy who defended me says that there are about 10 patrol cars and I don’t know what these people are going to do now,” she said by telephone before the communication was cut off and she was arrested.
After being arrested, the activist of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) was accused of the alleged crime of “contempt”.
On May 8, 2021, Torres Cruz was cleared of criminal charges. Shortly after, she revealed that she had left Cuba as a consequence of the pressure and threats received from State Security.
