Melody González Pedraza presided over the Villa Clara court that sentenced four young people to prison on May 8
14ymedio, Madrid, May 31, 2024 — Cuban judge Melody González Pedraza, who among other sentences gave four years in prison for attack, has been detained in Florida awaiting a judicial resolution after requesting asylum. According to Martí Noticias this Friday, the magistrate arrived at Tampa International Airport on Thursday after receiving humanitarian parole.
Upon arrival, the immigration authorities denied her entry into the United States because of her history in Cuba, but she invoked political asylum, according to her sponsor, Roberto Castellón. One of the cases that González Pedraza judged as president of the Popular Municipal Court of Encrucijada, in Villa Clara, detailed by Martí Noticias, was that of four young people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails against a jeep and homes of the heads of the Police and State Security of the same Villa Clara municipality on November 18, 2022.
The judgment was handed down with a sentence on May 8, 2024. For this reason, she was included by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba on its list of repressors. According to the text, to which Martí Noticias had access, she imposed, for the crime of attack, four years in prison on Andy Gabriel González Fuentes, Eddy Daniel Rodríguez Pérez and Luis Ernesto Medina Pedraza, and three years on Adain Barreiro Pérez.
Rodríguez Pérez’s mother, Marisol Rodríguez Millán, says that it was a “rigged trial” and told Martí Noticias that her son, now in prison, had been granted U.S. humanitarian parole. “She gav