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The YouTuber and activist Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known as Anna Bensi, posted a powerful message on Facebook this Monday denouncing the pressures she received from agents of the Cuban regime's Counterintelligence to remain silent, just minutes after doing a live broadcast where she detailed what happened during the interrogation she underwent this Monday at the police station in Alamar, Havana.
In her post, the 21-year-old described that the conclusion of the interrogation was an attempt at manipulation through what she called a "friendly script": "Today, the conclusion of the interrogation with the Cuban dictatorship's Counterintelligence was to manipulate me through a friendly script showing concern for me and to recruit me through music and to silence me, or to meet with my sister and my mom or to lament that I spend my youthful days confined in a penitentiary."
The interrogation on Monday was actually a coordinated trap: Anna and her mother, Caridad Silvente, were summoned under the pretext of signing documents related to the case file against her mother, while content creator David Espinosa and his wife Laidy García were simultaneously called to another police unit, leaving them alone and isolated, without phones.
After signing the documents in less than five minutes, the mother was escorted outside the station, and Anna was detained alone by the instructor Eddie Cala. Three counterintelligence agents—two women and a man who never identified themselves—interrogated her using the "good cop, bad cop" tactic.
When Anna mentioned that music was her greatest passion —referring to her song "My Land"— the agents offered to boost her career in exchange for abandoning her activism on social media: "That dream can come true, Sofia. That dream is in your hands; it only depends on you. We can help you with that."
The young woman categorically rejected the proposal. "They wanted me to be silent, to take another path," she explained, and she was direct in stating her position: I will never work for a dictatorship.
The agents also resorted to psychological pressure, suggesting that she could face prison if she continued with her posts and telling her it would be "a shame" for her to spend her youth behind bars. Furthermore, they attempted to discredit her surroundings, claiming that no one outside could help her if the situation worsened.
In her Facebook post, Anna was emphatic in rejecting any accusations of belonging to organizations or responding to external interests: "I have never committed any crime. I am not a leader of anything, I do not belong to anything, and even less do I allow myself to be manipulated by anyone."
The repression against Anna Bensi began on March 10, 2026, when she and her mother recorded and published the moment a sub-official from the Ministry of the Interior handed them an irregular citation. The authorities used that video to charge them under Article 393 of the Cuban Penal Code, which classifies "acts against personal and family privacy," with penalties ranging from two to five years in prison. On March 25, both were informed of the charges and placed under house arrest.
The repression has extended to the entire family: Anna's sister, Elmis Rivero Silvente, a U.S. citizen, was interrogated and threatened by State Security on April 10, just hours before she was set to board her flight to Miami. On April 9, U.S. diplomat Mike Hammer, head of the mission from the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, visited Anna and her mother in Alamar and noted that "her only crime has been to defend her beliefs, her faith."
Despite everything, Anna concluded her post with a statement that encapsulates her stance against the dictatorship: "What I have done, from day one, has been out of conviction. And because I believe that the truth must prevail."
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