The former judge Melody González Pedraza, currently detained in Florida after arriving with humanitarian parole, filed a complaint with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, claiming the "distortion" of the judicial system in Cuba.
The lawyer, who will face her first asylum hearing in the United States on July 31, also requested protection from the international organization in case she is deported to the island, according to a close relative who informed the independent media Diario de Cuba.
González Pedraza argued in his complaint that the Cuban judicial system is controlled by political decisions and external agents such as the Communist Party, the Government, and State Security.
The complaint, filed on July 25, seeks for the UN to investigate these practices and stop the interferences that prevent the Cuban people from accessing true justice, as demonstrated during the arbitrary trials against the demonstrators of July 11, 2021.
Through a letter addressed to a high-ranking official of the rapporteur’s office based in Geneva, Switzerland, she also requested protection from possible reprisals from the Cuban regime in the event of being deported to the island.
The former judge, who is at the Broward Transitional Center (BTC) in Pompano Beach, Florida, expressed that she feels "calmer and safer" despite not having a lawyer for her asylum hearing, where she could receive a deportation order.
"I trust that my voice will be heard and that I will not be handed over to death, probable imprisonment, and the most humiliating situation," he said in his petition for protection to the UN.
González Pedraza also mentioned her desire to exonerate four young Cubans whom she herself condemned without sufficient evidence and who will have a new trial on August 9.
The Provincial People's Court of Villa Clara accepted the appeal of the sentence issued against Andy Gabriel González Fuentes, Adain Barreiro Pérez, Eddy Daniel Rodríguez Milián, and Luis Ernesto Medina Pedraza, who were accused of throwing Molotov cocktails in November 2022 against the properties of police chiefs and State Security in Encrucijada, Villa Clara.
The magistrate, who presided over the Municipal Court, confessed that she sentenced the young people despite the existence of exculpatory evidence due to pressure from State Security.
The other judges who signed the ruling were Marlenis Toriza Rivero and Ana Ivis Rodríguez Rodríguez.
González Pedraza arrived in the United States on May 31 under the Humanitarian Parole program, but he was denied entry into the country upon arriving at Tampa airport because he appeared on the list of repressors from the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC).
González Pedraza's complaint seeks not only protection for herself but also justice for the young people she sentenced and a reform in the Cuban judicial system.
Her family expressed confidence in the structures of the UN and in the US justice system to address the judge's case.
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