Cuban Activist Denounces Threat of Arrest During Police Siege in Alamar
Anna Bensi said that an agent threatened her after she registered the operation that, according to her, sought to prevent her from attending an event with her mother at the U.S. Embassy.
Cuban activist Anna Bensi denounced that a police officer threatened to arrest her on the stairs of her building in Alamar, Havana. According to what she said on social media, the official arrived at the building after Bensi recorded and published images of the deployment around her home. The young woman said that the operation limited her movements and that the threat was made when she was documenting the siege. She shared her complaint during the early hours of Monday morning.
The police operation, she said, lasted Sunday and sought to prevent her and her mother, Caridad Silvente, from participating in a cultural event planned at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Bensi mentioned patrols and plainclothes agents in the vicinity. She also described people who appeared to be nurses or street vendors and an alleged baker who, according to her publication, was not carrying any product.
The threat occurs when Bensi is serving a judicial sentence imposed together with his mother. On October 1, 2026, the People's Municipal Court of East Havana set a two-year limitation of freedom, after the recording and dissemination of the visit of an agent of the Ministry of the Interior to her home in March of that year. Reports indicate that a new arrest could lead to the activist ending up in effective prison.
The complaint follows reports of police measures against journalists and activists in November. Yoani Sánchez was held for nearly nine hours on November 5. Camila Acosta, according to the information released, was handcuffed for more than eight hours on November 3 and had her phone destroyed. Anthony Martínez Román remained in custody for more than 20 hours and was released on November 7, in another reported case.
The independent media also notes that content creator Karel Daniel Hernández Bosques was interrogated for 12 hours in a Havana police unit on November 6. Kamil Zayas Pérez and Ernesto Ricardo Medina, founders of El4tico, have been imprisoned since February 2026 and still do not have a trial date. They are charged with crimes of propaganda against the constitutional order and incitement to commit crimes, for which they could receive sentences of up to nine years.
The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights recorded 3,438 repressive actions in Cuba between January and October 2026. Of that total, 145 corresponded to surveillance and sieges in homes, according to the entity, which places the events of November within an already documented pattern. After Bensi's conviction in October, the U.S. Embassy in Cuba issued a message in defense of freedom of thought and maintained that expressing different opinions does not constitute a crime.