Havana court sentences Christian creator and mother after video of Cuban agent

A municipal court in East Havana convicted 21-year-old Christian content creator Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente and her mother Caridad Silvente Laffita of acts against personal and family privacy after they filmed a state security agent at their Alamar home and posted the video online.

Judge Zamira Marrero Morgado handed each woman two years of restriction of liberty, a supervised penalty served outside prison that limits travel and residence changes. The charge rested on Article 393 of Cuba’s Penal Code, which covers a person’s image, voice, and personal data on social media.

The Christian Post reported the Thursday trial at the Cojímar courthouse capped months of pressure that began when agent Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos arrived in civilian clothes on March 10 to deliver a summons. The women recorded him. The video spread. Two weeks later he filed a complaint and demanded a video apology. His lawyer sought two years in prison for Benítez, who posts as Anna Bensi, and two years of house arrest for her mother.

Restrictions have bound the pair since March. Authorities barred Benítez from traveling abroad. In April the case reopened after she argued online with the national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. State security officers then questioned her for more than ten hours in July. A September 17 hearing was postponed.

Before entering court, Benítez made her position plain.

“We do not agree with our country’s political system; that is not a crime.”

Religious leaders treated the case as a test of basic justice on an island already strained by shortages. On Tuesday, four of Cuba’s largest registered Protestant denominations, the Assemblies of God, the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, the Evangelical League of Cuba, and the Methodist Church of Cuba, issued separate statements of support. The Baptist Convention of Western Cuba described the mother and daughter as full members who “possess a powerful testimony of Christian life.”

The same statement rejected the criminal label outright and warned of wider consequences.

“They are not delinquents, attackers, drug dealers, terrorists or mercenaries…. Due to a basic sense of justice we cannot, do not want to and will not leave them on their own. On an island that is falling apart, characterized by hunger, illness, unhealthiness, scarcity of water, electricity and medicine, apathy and a lack of protection from the police, the imprisonment of these two innocent and righteous women will be the drop that causes the cup to overflow.”

Roughly thirty representatives of religious communities gathered outside the courthouse from 10 a.m. until the women emerged at 2 p.m. The crowd sang and prayed. Religious leaders Arturo Leal and Bárbaro Marrero accompanied the pair inside. Pastor Rolando Pérez Lora was pushed and handcuffed by a plainclothes agent and two police officers as he and his wife tried to walk with them. Youth pastor David Espinosa and his wife were also detained that morning. All four were released once the trial ended.

Independent journalists Yoani Sánchez and Camila Acosta said police blocked them from leaving their homes to cover the proceedings. The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights described the detentions and home confinements as an operation to keep activists, reporters, and clergy away from the courthouse. These moves fit a familiar pattern of pressure on believers who refuse to stay silent, the same friction that surfaces in politically charged attacks on religious tributes closer to home.

Cuba’s Interior Ministry has insisted the law treats recording a person and publishing the image without consent as two separate acts. It rejected claims that Benítez was prosecuted solely for filming an official. Prosecutors leaned on that privacy statute. The agent told the court he felt depressed after the video circulated and wanted an apology. Defense attorney Roberto Ortega said the pair will appeal within the short window once the written ruling appears. Christian Solidarity Worldwide described the sentence as two years of house arrest. The penalty requires the women to appear when summoned, forbids residence changes without permission, and limits travel outside their province; it does not automatically lock them inside their home.

Anna Lee Stangl, advocacy director at the UK-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide, did not speak evasively about the outcome.

“a gross miscarriage of justice”

She urged Cuban authorities to void the verdict. The U.S. Embassy in Havana posted its own message on the day of the trial: “Thinking differently is not a crime.” U.S. chargé d’affaires Mike Hammer had already visited the women at their home in April. Florida Republican Reps. María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez condemned the proceedings. Cuban musicians Yotuel Romero, La Diosa, and Diana Fuentes voiced public support for Benítez.

Benítez herself linked the pastor’s detention to the larger system, saying he was held without justification “because Cuba is a dictatorship where you cannot think differently.” That blunt assessment sits at the center of the case even as the court dressed the conviction in privacy language. Readers who follow contests over faith and public power will recognize the double standard that appears when officials protect one set of beliefs while punishing another, a tension also visible in a federal lawsuit over selective holiday displays funded by taxpayers.

The women remain under supervision. Their travel is restricted. Their residence is monitored. The written ruling that will spell out every detail has not yet been issued. The defense is preparing its appeal. Four major Protestant bodies have already declared they will not abandon the pair. The crowd that sang outside the Cojímar courthouse made the same point in real time.

What began as a civilian-clothes visit to deliver a summons became a months-long process of questioning, online arguments, postponed hearings, and finally a public conviction. The agent sought an apology video. The court delivered a two-year penalty. Pastors who tried to walk with the defendants were handcuffed and held until the session ended. Journalists were kept in their homes. The pattern is clear to anyone willing to look: dissent filmed and posted is treated as a crime against privacy when the person filmed works for state security.

Similar clashes over religious conviction and institutional power play out in American courtrooms and workplaces, including a Michigan hospital settlement with a physician assistant who refused training that conflicted with his faith. The Cuban version simply removes the pretense of neutral process. Article 393 becomes the tool. Restriction of liberty becomes the sentence. The message to every other content creator, pastor, and parent is unmistakable.

Parental and religious authority face pressure in free societies too, as seen when the Maine Supreme Court backed a father’s right to guide his daughter’s church attendance. In Havana the stakes are higher and the protections thinner. A 21-year-old who films an agent at her door and says the political system is wrong now lives under court supervision for two years. Her mother faces the same term. The churches that stood with them have drawn a line. The regime has drawn its own.

Free people notice when a government turns a camera into a criminal act and then calls it privacy protection. Accountability starts with naming that bargain for what it is.