Cuba Detains 14ymedio Founder Yoani Sánchez for Nine Hours, the Third Independent Journalist Held in Havana This Week

Cuban State Security agents detained Yoani Sánchez, the founder and director of the independent news outlet 14ymedio and one of the best-known critics of Cuba's government, on a Havana street Thursday morning and held her for about nine hours before releasing her. She was the third independent journalist detained in Havana this week, in a crackdown that drew a rebuke from the State Department and press freedom groups and was followed closely in Miami, where her reporting has long reached the Cuban exile community.

Sánchez, 51, left her home in Havana's Nuevo Vedado neighborhood at about 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 5 to shop at a neighborhood market, the Miami Herald reported. About 10 minutes later she texted colleagues that the police had taken her, writing in Spanish, "Me secuestró la policía," or "The police kidnapped me." Her outlet described the arrest as a kidnapping by the political police.

Detained, accused and released

Her husband, journalist and 14ymedio co-founder Reinaldo Escobar, who was in Madrid, confirmed on Facebook that State Security had detained her. Escobar later told Martí Noticias that authorities accused her of an offense against the constitutional order, and the Herald reported she had been charged with subversion of the constitutional order. Cuban authorities had not commented publicly on the case as of Thursday.

Sánchez was released late Thursday, roughly nine hours after she was taken. "I just got home," she wrote on X, according to Agence France-Presse. She thanked supporters and said public pressure had helped open the doors, adding that she would write on Friday about conditions in the cells and the lack of protection faced by detainees who have no public profile. She told her followers she felt a duty to make those people's stories public.

Three journalists in one week

Sánchez's arrest followed two other detentions of independent reporters in Havana in the same week, according to the Miami Herald and CBS News Miami:

• Camila Acosta, a reporter for the independent outlet CubaNet and a correspondent for Spain's ABC newspaper, was handcuffed near her home on Tuesday and held at the Playa police station into the night. Her family did not know where she was for more than eight hours. She received an official warning for filming an agent.
• Adelth Bonne Gamboa, a CubaNet contributor, was handcuffed in the Santos Suárez neighborhood. Officials seized his equipment, fined him 3,000 pesos under Decree-Law 370, which penalizes online content, and threatened him with prison.

On the same day Sánchez was held, police also detained Berta Soler, 63, the leader of the Ladies in White dissident movement, and fellow member María Cristina Labrada as they left the group's headquarters. Soler's husband, Ángel Moya, told AFP both women were released that evening. The Ladies in White formed after the 2003 Black Spring crackdown and received the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 2005.

Others remain behind bars. Henry Constantín, director of the outlet La Hora de Cuba, has been jailed since Sept. 16 on a charge of disobedience, which he denies, and is held at the Kilo 7 prison. 14ymedio contributor José Gabriel Barrenechea is serving six years for public disorder, and Jorge Bello Domínguez is serving 15 years after being jailed during the July 2021 protests, the Herald reported.

Who Yoani Sánchez is

Born in Havana and trained in philology at the University of Havana, Sánchez drew international attention in 2007 with her blog Generación Y, one of the first widely read independent voices from inside Cuba. In 2008 she won Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize and was named to Time's list of the 100 most influential people. She and Escobar founded 14ymedio in May 2014 as an independent digital daily produced from inside Cuba. She has also received a special citation from Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prizes and the International Press Institute's World Press Freedom Hero award.

Independent outlets such as 14ymedio operate without legal standing. A 2023 Cuban law authorizes only state-run media, and independent sites are reachable on the island mainly through VPNs, AFP reported. That makes readers abroad, including the large Cuban American audience in Miami-Dade County, central to how these outlets survive and are read.

Washington and press groups react

Juan Pablo Segura, the State Department's assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said the arrest was "part of the Cuban regime's continued campaign to crush the independent press," according to the Herald. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Press Association demanded her release. Erika Guevara-Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International, called the detention violent and described it as "a new and alarming attempt" to silence journalists. Amnesty also called for Constantín's release.

Orlando Gutiérrez, a Miami-based Cuban opposition activist, told CBS News Miami the arrests reflect the government's effort to restrict independent reporting in a country where all media is legally required to belong to the state. He urged the European Union to suspend funding to the Cuban government.

The detentions came the same day Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new round of sanctions on Cuban state companies, the family of the head of the military conglomerate GAESA, and Chinese suppliers to Cuba's armed forces.

A wider pattern on the island

Rights monitors describe a rising tide of repression. The Cuban Observatory for Freedom of Expression recorded 39 press freedom violations in September, up from 17 in August, and the Madrid-based group Prisoners Defenders counted a record 1,351 political prisoners at the end of September, the Herald reported. Cuban officials deny the characterization. President Miguel Díaz-Canel told NBC News in April, "There are no political prisoners in Cuba," and Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in September 2025 that there are no arbitrary arrests in Cuba.

The arrests also come as Cubans endure blackouts that now regularly exceed 24 hours, amid a U.S. pressure campaign on the island's fuel supply. Journalists like Acosta and Bonne Gamboa have been documenting that crisis; Bonne Gamboa's fine was tied to social media posts about the country's economic conditions, CBS News Miami and CiberCuba reported.

What's next

Sánchez said she planned to publish an account of her detention on Friday. It is not yet clear whether prosecutors will pursue the constitutional-order accusation against her or let it hang over her as she continues to work. Acosta and Bonne Gamboa are back home under official warnings and fines, and Constantín remains jailed. In Miami, where exile groups have long pushed Washington for a harder line on Havana, the week's arrests are likely to be cited in support of the administration's widening sanctions campaign.