Madrid/The process against youtuber Anna Sofía Benítez, known as Anna Bensi, and against her mother, Caridad Silvente, filed by the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Havana on April 13, has been reopened. The activist herself reported this in their networks this Monday, four days after being subjected to a eleven hour interrogation for State Security.
“They came from the court to my house,” says Benítez, who adds: “The ‘offended’ police officer supposedly filed the complaint. Now my mother and I are again under the same process.” They are accused of “acts against personal and family privacy, one’s own image and voice, the identity of another person and their data.”
On Thursday, the day that the chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Havana, Mike Hammer, called at his residence for the usual annual celebration for the 4th of July, his country’s independence day – which turned 250 this year – the young woman was detained. like other activistssuch as Leonardo Romero Negrín and Alexander Díaz Rodríguez, former prisoners of July 11, 2021, or Fernando Ginarte Mora, as well as the influencers Betty and Abel, from the Fuera de la Caja program, and Rolando Fidel Pérez, called Pregonero de Cristo.
“The ‘offended’ police officer supposedly filed the complaint. Now my mother and I are again under the same process”
The case of Díaz Rodríguez was the most serious. The opponent reported having been tortured and spent almost three days incommunicado, touring various police units. “They kidnapped me. They stripped me naked. They beat me. They pointed a gun at me simulating Russian roulette,” he said in a testimony released by Prisoners Defenders.
Romero Negrín, for his part, arrested for participating in a cacerolazo in the middle of one of the prolonged blackouts that plague the Island, left the station on Friday with a fine of 2,000 pesos.
As for Anna Bensi, as she herself said, she was threatened with jail after staying at the Alamar Police station from 10 in the morning until nine at night. “It’s the same as always, trying to silence, repress, threaten,” Benítez summarized shortly after returning home on Thursday night.
During the first four hours, as she recounted in a video, she remained sitting in the main room of the unit without anyone attending to her. She was then questioned by a man and a woman, who again spoke to her about the US embargo, the sanctions against Cuba and the possible consequences of her publications. The agents also insisted that he should change his videos and dedicate himself to “other types of content.”
That the activist continued making publications made clear something that she has repeated on numerous occasions: despite the threats, she will not remain silent.
That the activist continued making publications made clear something that she has repeated on numerous occasions: despite the threats, she will not remain silent. He already warned last Aprilafter leaving the same Alamar station, where he was told that the Prosecutor’s Office was filing the case reopened today.
“All these injustices only show what they deny so much about being: a dictatorship. If you think they plan to silence me, they are very wrong, unless they put me in prison,” he said then, after trying to dissuade her from abandoning her critical videos and publications on social networks.
At the beginning of last March, her mother, Caridad Silvente, recorded and broadcast images of the agent who came to her house to deliver a summons to her daughter. The youtuber came weeks later to testify in relation to the accusation against her mother, but ended up being charged with the same crime.
At the beginning of April, the US chargé d’affaires in Cuba, Mike Hammer went to their house, in Havana, on a support visit, but neither Benítez nor her family has stopped being harassed by the political police.
The repression is intensifying now, when there are only five days left until the fifth anniversary of the massive protests of 11J.
