Havana/The independent journalist Camila Acosta was arrested this Tuesday in the middle of a public street in Havana by police officers who handcuffed her and violently put her into a patrol car, according to her husband, the writer and former political prisoner Ángel Santiesteban. The reporter of CubaNet She was going with her cat to the veterinarian when she was intercepted near her home, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality. At the time of publishing this note, his whereabouts and the reasons for his arrest are unknown.
A neighbor who witnessed the arrest picked up the animal, abandoned on the street, and notified Santiesteban. “They took her away handcuffed and violently put her into the patrol car,” the writer told CubaNet. According to her testimony, several people protested the police action and defended the journalist, but the agents responded that “because of her they had beaten the family member of a revolutionary.”
“They took her handcuffed and violently put her into the patrol car,” her husband, Ángel Santiesteban, told ‘CubaNet’
Santiesteban later noted on his social networks that the agents had mentioned the town of Guanabo, east of Havana, as a possible destination for the detainee. He also raised the possibility that the operation was related to the trial scheduled for this Thursday against several members of Cuban Freemasonry, including the writer himself.
The arrest comes just one day after the violent arrest of Adelth Bonne Gamboaalso a collaborator of CubaNetin the Santos Suárez neighborhood, Diez de Octubre municipality. The reporter was handcuffed and taken in a patrol car on Monday morning, while his partner tried to document the procedure and also suffered police attacks.
The arrest occurs just one day after the violent arrest of Adelth Bonne Gamboa, also a contributor to ‘CubaNet’
Bonne was released hours later, but the agents confiscated a laptop, a telephone, two tripods, headphones and a microphone, without giving him documentation about the seizure. In addition, he received a fine of 3,000 pesos under Decree-Law 370, popularly known as the Azote Law, and new threats of prison.
Acosta has a long history of harassment. On October 28, he reported that a man dressed in civilian clothes, whom he identified as a political police agent, prevented him from leaving his home without showing a court order. The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press (Iclep) has documented other police sieges against her this year.
In July 2021, the journalist was arrested after covering the 11J protests for CubaNet and the Spanish newspaper ABC. She remained detained for four days and was subsequently placed under house arrest, as documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. In April 2024, she was detained again in Cárdenas, Matanzas, when she was trying to visit relatives of political prisoners.
The new police operation coincides with the warnings of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), which during its 82nd General Assembly, held in October in Bogotá, denounced the intensification of arrests, summonses, movement restrictions and criminal proceedings against independent Cuban communicators.
The organization demanded the release of Henry Constantíndirector of Cuba Timeimprisoned since September in Camagüey, and demanded the legal recognition of independent media. He also questioned Decree 160/2026, which keeps activities related to the press and the dissemination of information under state control.
