The members of the youth collective Fuera de la Caja Cuba Amanda Beatriz ("Betty") and Abel Alejandro Andrés Navarro published a video on Instagram this Saturday, in which they recount in the first person the details of the interrogation they underwent at the hands of the Cuban State Security on Wednesday, July 2, describing the day as a deliberate operation to treat them "basically like criminals."
According to the account by the brothers Andrés Navarro in the recording, everything began at 10 in the morning when he was called to what was presented as an interview, but turned into a political interrogation lasting over an hour regarding the embargo, alleged crimes of "incitement to commit a crime," "defamation," and "denigration of the heroes."
One of the most striking moments of the account was when the activist described how the agents pointed to the phrase "until when" — a common expression among Cubans — as an act of incitement to commit a crime: "Saying 'until when', a phrase that all Cubans use, was considered incitement to delinquency. I mean, it's unbelievable," she stated.
At the end of the interrogation, the young woman came down and found her brother held in conditions that shocked her: "I go down and see my brother in what looks like a sort of prison cell, and I don't understand why he's there, since he's not a criminal." Furthermore, at one point in the process, the agents attempted to take him to the cells with other prisoners, a tactic that the activist interpreted as an intimidation maneuver.
The repressive operation of July 2 simultaneously affected four activists in different police units in Havana. The brothers Amanda Beatriz (“Betty”) and Abel Alejandro Andrés Navarro were taken to the National Revolutionary Police Unit of the 10 de Octubre municipality in Lawton, while Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente (“Anna Bensi”) and Pastor Rolando Pérez Lora (“Pregonero de Cristo”) were summoned to the Alamar station in East Havana.
The detention lasted almost 11 hours, far exceeding the legal limit of two hours established by Cuban law for this type of procedure.
In the video, the brothers pointed out that the prolonged bureaucracy was entirely intentional: "The fact that we were kept for so many hours in procedures that could have taken much less time was obviously to make us miss the day we were invited to the event at Mike Hammer's house," they said, referring to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States at the residence of the U.S. chief diplomatic mission.
The United States Embassy in Havana publicly denounced the repression, and Mike Hammer questioned on X the threats from State Security against Cuban citizens attending diplomatic events.
The summons also had formal irregularities: Abel Andrés Navarro reported that the document was "poorly written, outside of any legal terms" and that the date listed was June 2 instead of July 2.
Anna Bensi was freed past 8:56 PM on Wednesday, crying and amid applause from her loved ones. The activist has been under house arrest since March 25, 2026, accused along with her mother of "acts against personal privacy," facing sentences of between two and five years in prison.
The activist David Espinosa («DavidSiloetano») described the day as «almost 11 hours of psychological torture» and criticized that the aim was to prevent the group from attending the event at Hammer's house.
In light of everything that has happened, the young people from Fuera de la Caja reaffirmed their stance: "We are simply young individuals expressing what we feel on social media and standing by that belief, that's all."
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