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Karel Daniel Hernández Bosques, a member of the Cuban content creators’ group Fuera de la Caja Cuba, was released after 12 hours of questioning at a Havana police station, where he had been summoned on the morning of Friday, Nov. 6, the group said on social media.
Hernández Bosques had been summoned by Cuba’s political police to the station on Aguilera Street, in the Diez de Octubre district. Authorities have not publicly explained why.
He walked into the station at 9 a.m., Fuera de la Caja Cuba posted on X. “Our friend Karel has been in there since 9 a.m.,” activist David Espinosa, who is close to the group, told Telemundo 51 that afternoon.
Fuera de la Caja Cuba announced his release with a video of the young man leaving, posted on Facebook and X.
“He was finally released after 12 hours of questioning. Twelve hours of questioning just for making videos and posting them online,” Fuera de la Caja Cuba wrote in its Facebook post.
State Security also summoned Mauro Reigosa Pérez, another member of Fuera de la Caja Cuba, to the same station. No reason has been given in his case either.
A day earlier, on Thursday, Nov. 5, Reigosa and Hernández Bosques had denounced the summons in a video posted by the group. In it, Reigosa said he feels they are living through a “wave of repression” against Cubans who create content or engage in political activism.
Internet cutoffs and detentions against Fuera de la Caja Cuba since May
Fuera de la Caja Cuba was founded in January in Havana’s Cerro district. Its four members are siblings Amanda Beatriz and Abel Alejandro Andrés Navarro, Mauro Reigosa Pérez and Karel Daniel Hernández Bosques.
The group posts debate and political commentary videos on social media under the hashtag #makecubagreatagain.
On May 16, all four members of Fuera de la Caja Cuba lost internet and mobile phone service, the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP) documented. The cutoff came as the U.S. Embassy released images of their meeting with Mike Hammer, the embassy’s chargé d’affaires in Havana. ICLEP described it as retaliation for that meeting, which other content creators also attended.
The cutoff also hit creators David Espinosa, Laydi García and Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, who were at the same meeting. “We were completely cut off, all of us,” Espinosa said in testimony included in the report.
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On July 2, the Andrés Navarro siblings were held for several hours at the same Aguilera station. Amanda’s questioning was presented to her as an interview. ICLEP described those detentions as an operation to keep them from attending the U.S. Embassy’s Independence Day reception, to which they had been invited.
The summonses of the two Fuera de la Caja Cuba members came at the end of a week in which three independent journalists were detained in Havana.
Three independent journalists detained in Havana in four days
On Monday, Nov. 2, police detained reporter Adelth Bonne Gamboa near his home in the Santos Suárez neighborhood. Journalist José Raúl Gallego reported the arrest on Facebook and described it as violent.
Bonne Gamboa was released hours later with a fine under Decree-Law 370 over his social media posts, of 3,000 pesos according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Officers confiscated his work equipment.
The next day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, reporter Camila Acosta was detained as she left to take her cat to the vet, according to her husband, writer and former political prisoner Ángel Santiesteban.
Acosta spent the afternoon in a cell at the Playa police station and was released that night. In a video posted on social media, she said she left with an official warning for an alleged crime against personal privacy.
She said the detention was linked to a video she had recorded the previous week of a plainclothes officer who stopped her from leaving her home. When her phone was returned, it no longer worked, she added.
On the morning of Thursday, Nov. 5, State Security officers detained journalist Yoani Sánchez, director of the digital newspaper 14ymedio, shortly after she left her home. Her husband, journalist Reinaldo Escobar, reported it on Facebook.
“Yoani Sánchez has been detained by State Security today in Havana,” Escobar wrote.
The CPJ called for her release the same day. “Cuban authorities should immediately release Yoani Sánchez and disclose her whereabouts,” said José Zamora, CPJ’s regional director for the Americas.
Sánchez was released that same day, after about nine hours held at a police station, she later said.
“I just got home. Thank you all for the solidarity and for spreading the word about the arbitrary detention,” she wrote on X.
If you have information about these summonses or detentions, you can send it to the Cubanos por el Mundo newsroom through our contact page.
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