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The activist Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente (“Anna Bensi”), the evangelical pastor Rolando Pérez Lora (“Pregonero de Cristo”), and the siblings Amanda Beatriz Andrés Navarro and Abel Alejandro Andrés Navarro from the youth collective Fuera de la Caja Cuba were held for over eight hours this Thursday in various police stations in Havana without any of them being released.
According to reports published on Facebook at 6:10 p.m. this Thursday, everyone had been summoned for 10:00 a.m. Anna Bensi and the Pregonero de Cristo were called to the police station in Alamar, in East Havana, while Betty and Abel were taken to the National Revolutionary Police Unit on Aguilera Street, in the 10 de Octubre municipality.
David Espinosa, who followed the case from the outside and published the report, wrote: “I can't think of another word but 'TORTURE'. But the world can see it now.”
The group Fuera de la Caja Cuba also voiced their stance on social media: «8 hours and still waiting. Anna and Rolando are in the same situation. We are not leaving without our brothers.»
The detention of all of them far exceeded the legal limit of two hours established by Cuban legislation for police interviews, which constitutes a blatant violation of the regime's legal framework.
The citation for Anna Bensi was signed by First Lieutenant Julio Torres Suárez to receive an "official warning," a mechanism that human rights organizations consider a tool for intimidation prior to criminal proceedings.
The announcement came days after a public confrontation between the activist and Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, a former intelligence agent and national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
Anna Bensi has been placed under house arrest since March 25, 2026, accused along with her mother of "acts against personal privacy" for disseminating a video in which a MININT agent delivered an irregular summons at her home. She faces sentences ranging from two to five years in prison.
The Herald of Christ was arrested on March 15, 2026, in a park in Peñas Altas, Matanzas, for praying in public and uploading a biblical video to YouTube.
His case was documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and presented by the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer.
Fuera de la Caja Cuba, founded in early 2026 by four young individuals from the Cerro municipality in Havana, demands the release of over a thousand political prisoners in Cuba and has faced, since its public emergence, phone disconnections, account hacks, and threats of imprisonment against its family members.
This Thursday adds to a series of reprisals that the regime has intensified in 2026 against digital and religious activists on the island. As of the time of this report, none of the four detainees had been released.
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