Anna Bensi Convicted in Cuba for Filming Police Officer

A municipal court in eastern Havana has found twenty-one-year-old influencer Anna Bensi and her mother guilty of violating a state security agent’s privacy after the pair filmed the officer delivering a summons at their home and posted the footage online. According to elTOQUE, the court sentenced Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente — known online as Anna Bensi — and Caridad Silvente Laffita to two years of restricted freedom in a trial held on October 1, 2026, at the Habana del Este Municipal Court and declared private.

The charge rested on a provision of the Cuban Penal Code covering acts against personal and family privacy, image, voice, and data. Anna Bensi and her mother were convicted for recording and publishing footage of a Ministry of the Interior agent at their own front door, an act human rights organizations such as Justicia 11J and Cubalex have described as another case of criminalizing critical expression in Cuba. The two women are now waiting to receive the ruling in writing before filing an appeal, according to elTOQUE.

The case began on March 10, 2026, when a noncommissioned officer named Yoel L. Rabaza Ramos arrived at the family’s apartment to deliver a summons issued in the mother’s name on behalf of State Security. Anna Bensi and her mother recorded the encounter and posted the video on social media as a safety measure. After an initial failed attempt by the authorities to prosecute them through charges filed ex officio, the officer personally filed a complaint against both women, likely under pressure from his superior officers and State Security, as reported by elTOQUE.

Anna Bensi’s path from filming to guilty verdict

The timeline of the case shows how quickly a single video escalated. After the March 2026 recording, both women were placed under house arrest late that month and barred from leaving the country, where they remained until the trial. The trial itself was closed to the public, presided over by Judge Zamira Marrero Morgado, and ended with the guilty verdict on October 1, 2026. The defense now has a limited window to appeal once the written ruling is delivered, and their defense attorney Roberto Ortega has said the appeal clock starts the moment they are notified.

Trial day drew dozens of supporters to the courthouse despite a heavy police deployment. According to elTOQUE, patrol cars and plainclothes agents surrounded the family’s home from early morning, and the mother and daughter were escorted for the entire journey to court. Independent journalists were harassed as they tried to cover the proceedings, including CubaNet reporter Camila Acosta, while members of the youth collective Fuera de la Caja said police told them they could not leave their homes until late morning. Evangelical pastor Rolando Fidel Pérez Lora, described by elTOQUE as being known on social media as “Pregonero de Cristo,” was violently detained by state security and police agents on his way to the courthouse, and Christian activist David Espinosa Martínez was also detained while trying to attend.

Minutes before entering the courthouse, Anna Bensi spoke to accredited foreign media outside. “The trial will not be fair, but I have a just God,” she said, as reported by CubaHeadlines. She added that she hoped the truth would prevail but warned that the country is governed by what she called a state of injustice. After the hearing, she maintained that neither she nor her mother are criminals and that they merely express what they think through a phone, which she said is not a weapon, adding that disagreeing with Cuba’s political system is not a crime. When a journalist from the EFE news agency asked what the solution for the country was, Anna Bensi replied: “For Cuba to be free.”

Why Anna Bensi’s case matters beyond Cuba

The conviction lands in the middle of a broader crackdown on young critical creators on the island. Bensi rose to prominence through videos about daily life in Cuba, including power outages, shortages, and low wages, and in July 2026 she revealed she had endured nearly twelve hours of police interrogation over her posts and criticism of the government, as reported by CubaHeadlines. Her case is not isolated: as reported by CubaHeadlines, two members of a youth content collective in Holguín were arrested in February 2026 on charges of propaganda against the constitutional order, with prosecutors seeking prison sentences of eight and ten years for Ernesto Ricardo Medina and Kamil Zayas Pérez. Members of Fuera de la Caja Cuba also reported surveillance, movement restrictions, and phone line disruptions on the day of the trial.

For young readers, the case strikes at a practice that is a global norm: filming encounters with police and authority figures as a form of accountability and self-protection. Anna Bensi herself framed the recording as a safety measure, and in Cuba the same instinct — pulling out a phone when an agent arrives unannounced — has now been treated as a criminal offense. Rights groups argue the precedent puts every Cuban who documents abuse at legal risk.

The state, for its part, frames the case as a privacy dispute rather than political persecution. According to CubaHeadlines, the regime argued that the crime was not the recording itself but the dissemination of the footage without the officer’s consent. Official outlets have claimed that public officials are protected by image rights and should not be filmed, much less have their actions posted on social media. But elTOQUE notes that Cuban law contains no express prohibition against filming officials performing their duties, and rights advocates counter that public functions are not private, particularly when carried out in common spaces such as the hallway of an apartment building.

What comes next is procedural but consequential. The defense is awaiting the written ruling, which will open the window for an appeal, and the women remain under restrictions in the meantime. The conviction has already drawn international attention: Cuban-American lawmakers condemned the ruling and the United States government demanded the release of Anna Bensi and her mother, as reported by CubaHeadlines. Whether the appeal succeeds or not, the case has become a symbol of how Cuba punishes citizens who use a phone to document what the authorities would rather keep unseen.