The independent journalist Camila Acosta, reporter for CubaNet and correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC in Havana, was released this Tuesday after spending several hours detained by State Security agents.
"I just arrived home. I spent the whole afternoon in a holding cell at the Playa police station. Tomorrow I will share the details of what happened. Thank you all for your concern," Acosta expressed on Facebook.
The agents intercepted her at the corner of her home, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, as she was heading to a veterinary appointment with her cat. According to her husband, the writer and former political prisoner Ángel Santiesteban, reported to CubaNet: "They took her away in handcuffs and violently shoved her into the patrol car."
The pet was left abandoned in the public space until a neighbor picked it up and alerted Santiesteban, who visited several police stations without receiving any information about the journalist's whereabouts. When neighbors attempted to intercede, the officers justified the arrest with a vague accusation: that "because of her, a relative of a revolutionary had been beaten," without presenting any formal charges.
The arrest on Tuesday coincided with direct judicial pressure on his family environment: on that same day, the People's Municipal Court of Diez de Octubre set the oral trial for November 5 against Santiesteban and three other Masonic leaders, accused of illegal currency trafficking due to two informal exchange operations totaling 300 dollars intended for the National Masonic Asylum Llansó. The Prosecutor's Office requested two years of freedom restriction and a fine of 20,000 pesos for Santiesteban.
The arrest is part of an escalating crackdown on independent journalists that has intensified in recent days. The day before, communicator Adelth Bonne Gamboa, who is also a contributor to CubaNet, was violently detained in the Santos Suárez neighborhood. He was released hours later, but his laptop, phone, camera, and audio equipment were confiscated, and he was fined 3,000 pesos under Decree-Law 370, the regulation that the regime uses to penalize those who disseminate information on digital platforms.
Freedom House condemned both arrests as part of “a broader effort to silence independent journalism and conceal the reality of repression in Cuba”, and demanded that Cuban authorities “immediately release those detained for their journalistic work and put an end to harassment, arbitrary detention, and intimidation against independent journalists.”
The harassment against Acosta is not new. Just five days earlier, a plainclothes officer had prevented her from leaving her home without showing a court order or identifying himself, an incident that the journalist recorded and shared. In 2022, she stated that she had been detained approximately twenty times throughout her career, and she has been classified as "regulated" — with a ban on leaving the country — since 2019.
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