14ymedio, Havana, 30 November 2021 — Independent journalist Camila Acosta, in home confinement for more than four months, has had the charges against her changed for reporting on the July 11 protests, for which she was detained for four days later. The political police informed her this Tuesday, at the Zapata y C Police Unit, in Havana, where they summoned the young woman.
In a direct transmission, the CubaNet collaborator and correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC said that she was no longer being charged for “public disorder,” as they told her then, but “instigation to commit a crime,” a crime that, according to Acosta, was added to her file post-arrest.
“The [State] Security does what they want with these files and of course it is a false crime as well,” the journalist asserts in the video. She says that for the accusation she faces a sanction of three-months to one year in prison or a fine “from 100 to 300 quotas*.”
The reason for the summons, Acosta also details, was to inform her that the political police will check her phone, the flash memory and the hard disk that they confiscated, “as if they had not already done so,” she adds.
“There is a detail with this crime: they accuse me of instigating a crime, but it does not say what is the crime to which I am inciting other people to commit,” she protests, while denouncing that the Cuban repressive organs violate “what is established in its own legislation.”
“I made it clear to Lieutenant Ernesto Dávila Gallardo that at no time did they give me an official document in which they notified which were the teams that had been involved in that search, nor the reason,” she said. “The justification they gave me is that this document is given to the homeowner and they asked the owner if he wanted the document and the owner said no.” The journalist says that she consulted with Cubalex and the legal organization told her that she was the resident of that house and that the confiscated equipment was hers, so the document should have been delivered to Acosta herself.
After the frustrated Civic March for Change, convened by the Archipiélago platform for November 15, State Security has not stopped harassing independent activists, artists and journalists. Some of them, members of the San Isidro Movement or the 27N (27 November) group, have been forced into exile.
Another opponent who was called by the political police is Carolina Barrero, who has not yet provided information on that summons. The art historian explained in a Facebook post that they are accusing her of “instigation to commit a crime” for asking that people march on 15N.
“Among other errors and faults, the summons did not have written the place where she should go. The officer told me it was Zapata and C, while acknowledging that he had no stamp and that he would return tomorrow,” she writes. “I want to remind the police administration that the subpoenas must be signed by the criminal investigator who leads the investigation or by a prosecutor or assistant prosecutor. It cannot be done by a third party who will not be present later. This is called usurpation of charges and is a crime, one too frequent in politically motivated subpoenas.”
*Translator’s note: The Cuban penal code sets fines as a number of ’quotas’, which allows it to change the value of all fines with a single change redefining the value of one quota.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
