A video recorded from inside the detention area of the Unidad de Zanja, the well-known station of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) in Centro Habana, went viral on social media after being posted on Facebook by Marlene R. Sandoval, sparking a debate about detention conditions in Cuba.
In the recording, a young man claims to have been detained for three days without being able to communicate with his mother or receive food.
"Three days ago, they have me here. They haven't let me talk to my mom, and I haven't eaten anything," is heard saying the young man in the video, which also shows the lack of hygiene in the place and the overcrowding in which the detainees find themselves.
The question that sparked the most debate among the more than 650 comments was not the complaint itself, but a technical detail: how did someone manage to enter with a phone if the usual procedure involves removing all belongings before entering?
"Before entering the cell, they make you take off everything: wallet, shoelaces, shoes, everything. I don't understand how they got in with the phone," wrote a user, summing up the bewilderment of many.
Several commentators with direct experience in arrests provided an explanation: the space shown in the video is not the holding cell itself, but the initial waiting area.
"That, as such, is not the dungeon of Zanja; it's a waiting room where they put you to see what they will do with you. When you’re really entangled is when they send you to the back, where it's much smaller and has cement bunk beds. There, they take everything away from you," one of them explained.
Another user agreed: "That's the holding cell. They do let you keep your phone there," and added that "often they don't even check you when you go in. The thorough inspection happens when they send you to the detention cells."
There were also reports from those who managed to keep their devices through other means. "They didn't take mine because I didn't give it to them. They held me for one night until dawn," said one person.
Another person recalled a different case: "One time I was in a cell and someone came in with a keypad phone that he hid and turned the volume down."
A former detainee who described having gone through Cuba's prisons multiple times pointed to a more troubling possibility: "I remember that you would enter with nothing, but these are different times, or this is organized by State Security."
The Zanja Unit has a long history of complaints. In July 2025, writer Jorge Fernández Era reported being beaten there by a lieutenant colonel during his detention.
In July 2026, activist Leonardo Romero Negrín spent several days in that unit after participating in a pot-banging protest in Centro Habana, and was released with a fine of 2,000 Cuban pesos.
That same month, the opposition figure Manuel Cuesta Morúa was taken to that facility in what organizations described as a forced disappearance.
After the protests of July 11, 2021, Human Rights Watch documented that up to thirty people were crammed into a cell measuring less than five meters on each side in the Zanja Unit, and that some detainees were left in hallways due to a lack of space.
The video adds to a series of testimonials about detention conditions in Cuba, where Prisoners Defenders counts 1,306 recognized political prisoners in the country.
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