14ymedio, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The activist Yeilis Torres Cruz was freed from charges this Thursday after spending almost a year under investigation for the crime of attack after she herself was attacked by the official announcer Humberto López.
According to a document that Torres shared on her social networks, the Havana Provincial Prosecutor’s Office determined that it was not necessary to submit her case to the Court, although she was fined 3,000 pesos.
“I’m not satisfied with the fine they gave me,” the opponent, a former prosecutor of the Supreme Court and member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), argued in a live broadcast, because paying it implies acknowledging “that I committed a crime, which I did not commit, but already, it is preferable to be free than to be in prison.”
Torres Cruz spent ten months in jail during the criminal process, after being accused of an attack in May 2021 by Lieutenant Colonel Kenya Morales, of State Security, according to what she herself told this newspaper. In the street, she had rebuked 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 she was filming him. The activist learned of the accusation against her when she went to the police unit to report López for assault.
In the document made public this Thursday, the Prosecutor’s Office specifies that it took into account in this decision “the low social harmfulness of the event,” “the illuminating position” that the accused showed, which assumed “an attitude of repentance” and the family situation “being a mother of two children” and currently being “pregnant.”
That, Torres Cruz asserted in her video, is a lie: “They gave me my freedom because of all the kidney problems I have.” In any case, the opponent appreciates being at home with her family and insists that we must continue fighting for “the thousands of innocent political prisoners who are in prison.”
After the altercation with López, last year, the activist assured that the official spokesman hit her and tried to take her cell phone, a scene that was partly broadcast live through the social network Facebook. At that time, Torres recorded López leaving a building in Havana.
“Humbertico, how are you doing? Can you explain to the world why you are here in the house of a dear [lover] who has a wife?” Torres asked López. Then the presenter asks the woman to identify herself, which is followed by a struggle to, presumably, take her mobile from her and from which only voices and sounds are heard.
Yeilis Torres Cruz was arrested a few days after this incident when she responded to an official citation to appear at the police station 100 and Aldabó. She was then transferred to the Mujeres de Occidente prison, in El Guatao, in the Havana municipality of La Lisa.
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