News · Rights
Berta Soler's whereabouts still unknown two days after her arrest in Lawton, husband says
The Ladies in White leader was detained on Saturday during a neighborhood protest over the lack of running water in Lawton, Havana. Her husband, Ángel Moya, said on Monday that he does not know where she was taken, according to Cubanet and Martí Noticias.
Berta Soler Fernández, leader of the Ladies in White, remained missing on Monday, two days after her arrest, according to a social media post by her husband, former political prisoner Ángel Moya Acosta. Moya said he does not know where she was taken and that, as of that morning, neither her place of detention nor her physical and legal situation had been confirmed.
The arrest took place on Saturday in Havana's Diez de Octubre district, where Soler joined some twenty neighbors at around 10:00 in the morning as they demanded that water service be restored, near Porvenir Avenue and E Street. According to Martí Noticias, residents blamed the cutoff on the deliberate manipulation of a supply valve by the state company Aguas de La Habana, and with no solution offered the women blocked traffic with their own bodies at around 12:30 in the afternoon.
Moya, who was also detained that day, said State Security agents took him to the Aguilera police unit and that, inside the vehicle, he overheard several officers say they had seen Soler walking with a limp and in pain before she was driven away in a patrol car. He was released at around 8:30 at night, after being questioned by a State Security officer.
On Sunday, María Cristina Labrada, also a member of the Ladies in White, said on Facebook that other women who took part in the protest had been arrested, and quoted neighbors who described the arrests as violent. When she posted her account, she said she did not know where the detained women were or what condition they were in, according to Cubanet.
Moya noted that, apart from Soler, the protesters do not belong to opposition organizations: they are workers and residents of the neighborhood affected by the water shortage. The Ladies in White, founded in 2003 by relatives of the 75 opposition figures and activists jailed during the Black Spring, received the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 2005 and the Lech Wałęsa Solidarity Prize in 2025.
Sources: Cubanet · Martí Noticias
Data updated: 2026-11-09T16:15:00.000Z