News · Rights
Journalist Camila Acosta is detained in Havana and released after several hours
The CubaNet reporter and correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC was handcuffed in the street on Tuesday as she took her cat to the vet, and returned home at night after spending the afternoon in a holding cell at the Playa police station, according to her own account and her husband's.
Independent journalist Camila Acosta, a reporter for CubaNet and the Havana correspondent of the Spanish newspaper ABC, was intercepted by agents on Tuesday at the corner of her home, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, as she was taking her cat to the vet. Her husband, the writer and former political prisoner Ángel Santiesteban, said she was handcuffed and forced into a patrol car. A neighbor picked up the animal, left behind in the street, and alerted the family.
CubaNet published the alert shortly after 11 a.m. Its editor in chief, Claudia Padrón, told Telemundo 51 that the priority was to locate her. Santiesteban went from police stations to military units without getting any answer about her whereabouts. To neighbors who tried to intervene, the agents said that "because of her they had beaten a revolutionary's relative", in remarks translated by Yamacoa, without presenting any formal charge.
That night, Acosta wrote on Facebook that she was back home: "I spent the whole afternoon in a holding cell at the Playa police station. Tomorrow I will tell in detail what happened", in remarks translated by Yamacoa. She was never told of any charges.
The detention came alongside judicial pressure on her family circle: that same day, the Municipal People's Court of Diez de Octubre set November 5 for the trial of Santiesteban and three other Masonic leaders, accused of illegal currency trafficking over two informal exchange operations totaling 300 dollars intended for the Llansó National Masonic Home. Prosecutors are seeking two years of restricted liberty for him and a fine of 20,000 pesos.
On Monday, Adelth Bonne Gamboa, also a CubaNet contributor, had been violently detained in the Santos Suárez neighborhood. He was freed hours later, but agents confiscated a laptop, a phone, tripods and audio equipment, and fined him 3,000 pesos under Decree Law 370. Freedom House condemned both detentions and demanded an end to the harassment and intimidation of independent journalists.
A third journalist, Henry Constantín, director of La Hora de Cuba and regional vice president for Cuba of the Inter American Press Association's press freedom committee, has been moved out of the punishment cell at the Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey, though he remains in pretrial detention since September 16. His partner, the journalist Alejandra García, told Martí Noticias that the defense asked to change the precautionary measure, that the habeas corpus petition was denied and that witnesses were refused in the case over alleged disobedience.
Acosta had already been detained in July 2021 after covering the 11J protests for CubaNet and ABC: she spent four days in custody and was then placed under house arrest, as documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. She has been listed as "regulated", barred from leaving the country, since 2019, and in 2022 she said she had been detained some twenty times over her career.
Sources: 14ymedio · CiberCuba · ABC · Telemundo 51 · Martí Noticias
Data updated: 2026-11-04T04:15:00.000Z