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The Cuban activist Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known as Anna Bensi, reported on Monday that court officials visited her home to inform her that the criminal case against her and her mother, Caridad Silvente, has been reopened, just days after she was subjected to a new cycle of harassment by the regime.
“Representatives from the court came to my house. They reopened the case that had been archived on April 13. The 'offended' police officer supposedly filed the complaint. Now my mom and I are back under the same process,” Bensi wrote in his post on Facebook, accompanied by an image with the word “REPRESSION.”
The agent who filed the complaint is the MININT sub-official Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos, whose actions in March 2026 triggered the entire process.
Mother and daughter recorded him while he was delivering an irregular citation at their home and shared the video on social media.
The authorities then charged them under Article 393 of the Penal Code for "acts against personal and family privacy," a crime that carries prison sentences of between two and five years.
The case had been archived because the defense attorney, Roberto Ortega Ortiz, argued that this crime can only be prosecuted through a direct complaint from the offended party, not by a police report.
With the complaint now presented by the agent himself, that procedural argument is overcome, and the process is reactivated.
This new episode occurs just two days after Anna Bensi burst into tears upon her release after being held for nearly 11 hours at the station of the Revolutionary National Police in Alamar, which she described as an attempt by the regime to prevent her from attending the celebration of the United States Independence Day at the residence of the Chargé d'Affaires of the U.S. Embassy, Mike Hammer, where she had a special invitation to play the Cuban national anthem on the piano.
She was released at nine o'clock at night, when it was already impossible to attend the event.
"They released me at nine in the evening, as if to say we are sure you won't be able to go. It’s a complete injustice," declared the activist.
During that interrogation, an instructor from the PNR directly threatened her: "In your videos, you have incited, and if that incitement becomes a reality, you are committing a crime and we will put you in prison." Bensi made a written record of her position.
In summarizing what happened, she was emphatic: "In the end, the interrogation can be summarized as either shut up or create different types of content."
Since March 25, 2026, Anna Bensi and her mother have been under house arrest with a prohibition on leaving the country.
The organization Cubalex has maintained that recording public officials in office does not constitute a crime, but rather a citizen's right protected by the Cuban Constitution of 2019, an argument that the case projected to the international press, including the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
Hammer publicly denounced during the July 4th celebration the forced absences of Bensi, Yoani Sánchez, and members of Fuera de la Caja, describing the situation as "unacceptable."
The activist's mother, far from being intimidated, summarized the stance of both after the detention: "I feel stronger to pursue this. This demonstrates that they are a dictatorship, that it is a regime that tries to obscure, that seeks to silence the reality."
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