Ariel Limias Leyva, a 52-year-old Cuban, was identified as the man who climbed the stairs of the Capitol in Havana—home of the National Assembly of People's Power—without a shirt and with a poster on his head reading "No more absurd political discrimination, down with the dictatorship," according to an investigation by CubaNet that confirmed his identity and current situation.
The protest occurred around two in the afternoon and ended with his arrest. His wife, Yulia Morales, confirmed that he remains detained at the Dragones police station in Old Havana, isolated and being interrogated by political police agents. "They have him isolated. I couldn't see him. We have no news of his condition," Morales told CubaNet.
Limias Leyva is a former pastor of the Assembly of God church and works as a painter at the San José fair on Avenida del Puerto. He lives with his wife on Jesús María street in Old Havana.
Morales emphasized that her husband "is not an activist nor part of any movement" and that before leaving, he told her: "Someone has to do it for our country."
The immediate trigger was the trial held the previous day, when the People's Municipal Court of Havana del Este sentenced content creator Anna Bensi and her mother, Caridad Silvente, to two years of restricted freedom for recording and sharing on social media the visit of a MININT agent to their home.
On that same October 1st, the evangelical pastor Rolando Fidel Pérez Lora, known as the "Herald of Christ", was arrested while attempting to reach the court to support the accused, amid a large police operation and State Security.
The father-in-law of Limias Leyva, Jose Antonio Morales, publicly held the Cuban dictatorship accountable in a Facebook post: "I hold the Cuban dictatorship responsible for what may happen to my son-in-law in Cuba, who was detained for protesting in support of a mother and daughter and for the assault on the evangelical pastor."
In the videos circulated from the protest, a witness can be heard among the small crowd: "They're going to make him disappear, they're going to make him disappear. Now no one is joining him."
It is not the first time that Limias Leyva has taken to the streets to demand change. He had previously done so on April 5, 2021, and July 17 of that same year—days after the historic protests of 11J—when he walked through the streets of Havana with a sign reading "Freedom" and was arrested, receiving only a fine. His neighbors described him to CubaNet as "just another Cuban who suffocated and went out to claim his rights."
The arrest occurs within a context of increasing repression: September 2026 saw 663 protests and 136 acts of repression, while Cubalex documented nearly 2,000 repressive actions in the first half of the year, with Havana as the province with the highest number of recorded violations.
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