Cuban national granted time until March to regularise status

WESTERN BUREAU:A Cuban national, who came to Jamaica to get married and ended up being arrested for a fraudulent passport stamp, has been granted time to properly regularise her national status.

Ethelis Mendoza is before the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court on a charge of uttering a forged document. The circumstances behind the charge were not read out in court when she appeared on Monday.

Mendoza's lawyer, Petrona Wallock, supplied the court with a copy of her client's marriage certificate and photographs of the wedding to prove that Mendoza had married a Jamaican citizen.

Wallock also asked that the matter be removed from the court's case list as Mendoza had properly entered the country sometime ago and only got the fraudulent passport stamp to extend her stay in Jamaica after being told by another Cuban national that they could help her through that process.

"She honestly believed everything was in place, and she had no intention of doing what is given on the list as her offence," the lawyer remarked, adding that Mendoza's time in Jamaica would expire on February 21.

The prosecution noted that there was still one statement to be gathered from the immigration office for its case file and requested three weeks to do so.

Resident Magistrate Vivienne Harris extended Mendoza's bail until March 14, advising her, through an interpreter, to have her stay time extended and her national status regularised before the next court date.