20-year-old political prisoner recently released by Venezuela's socialist regime condemned He told the BBC over the weekend that he had been physically and mentally tortured during his wrongful imprisonment.
The man, identified by the BCC as “Juan,” is one of thousands of people unjustly detained by the regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in the aftermath of a fraudulent July 28 presidential election that Maduro claims he “won.” One of them.
According to 'Juan's' comments to the BBC, he was routinely beaten, fed rotten food and suffocated to death in a specially designated torture chamber.
After the sham elections, the Venezuelan regime launched a brutal persecution campaign against the opposition. According to UN estimates, left 27 died More than 2,400 people were detained, approximately 1,800 of whom Confirmed According to local non-governmental organization Foro Penal as of early December. Foro Penal told BCC that the organization has records of 23 people who were detained in the crackdown and subsequently disappeared.
Many of those unjustly detained, including dozens of children — is accused of committing “terrorism” and other anti-regime crimes for protesting the fraudulent results of July's election.
The Maduro regime used several tactics to hunt down dissidents, including: remodel Directly with state-controlled smartphone applications kidnapping This tactic of confining individuals from their homes and forcing them to record humiliating “apologies” is known locally as “Operation Knock Knock.”
Furthermore, President Maduro has two “re-education camp” is for dissidents of the socialist regime and is housed in a prison that the regime emptied of prisoners last year.
One of the camps is located within the Tocolon Prison, a prison facility that Venezuelan security officials served as the Torren de Aragua headquarters until September 2023.attacked” A prison was broken into and some of the gang's upper echelons escaped. Torren de Aragua leader Hector “The Child” Guerrero remains missing since his disappearance from prison at the time of this article.
Gonzalo Himiob, vice president of Foro Penal, told the BBC that the organization had received several cases of Venezuelans arrested for being near protests, even though they were not protesting. He said it was documented. “Juan” claimed to BCC that he was unfairly detained in this way.
The man was out on business when a group of hooded men intercepted him, covered his face and beat him, accusing him of “terrorism” and “incitement to hatred,” among other alleged crimes. He said he did. Juan explained that regime officials “drew me with petrol bombs and gasoline and took me to a detention center where I was held for several weeks before being transferred to Tokoron Prison.''
“When we arrived in Tokoron, they stripped us naked, beat us, insulted us, and shouted 'terrorists'. We were forbidden to look up and look at the guards and lowered our faces to the floor. I had to,” Huang said. “Then they put us in uniforms and put us in cells.”
The man explained to the BBC that he was assigned a small cell “3m x 3m” and had to share it with five other people. The cell had six beds spread over three bunks, with a “small square” in one corner with no privacy, and a septic tank and “a pipe that functioned as a shower.”
“In Tokoron, it felt more like a concentration camp than a prison,” the man said. “It reminded me of what I had seen in movies and heard about the concentration and torture camps of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.”
“They tortured us physically and mentally. They wouldn't let us sleep, they always came and asked us to get up and line up,” he continued. “We had no idea what time it was because we didn't have a clock. We started asking visitors for the time, and we started calculating how long it takes for the sun's rays to hit the walls.”
The man told the BBC that Tokoron had a “punishment cell” where the most rebellious prisoners and those who “dared to talk about politics or request a telephone to contact their families” were thrown into. did. Juan said he was kept in such a cell and was only given food every two days.
“It was a very dark cell, 1 meter by 1 meter in size. I was very hungry. Just remembering it makes me hungry. What kept me going was all the injustices that were happening. I thought about it and said I was going to get out of it someday,” Huang said.
The man also accused Tocoron of having another torture chamber known as “Adolfo's Bed”, named after the first person to die, and that prisoners were forced to suffocate there. did.
“It's a dark room the size of a vault with not much oxygen. I'll be stuck there for several minutes until I can't breathe and pass out, or I start banging on the door frantically. I put it in there, and it lasted just over five minutes. I thought I was going to die,” Huang said.
Huang explained that the other inmates he shared a cell with were only given a six-minute cold shower. Prisoners are only allowed out of their cells for 10 minutes every three days, are served rotten or expired food, are routinely beaten, and are forced to “walk like frogs” with their hands around their ankles. She was also subjected to abuse such as “
“Many people were acting like zombies. They were just waiting for food, and the quality of it was poor,” said Huang, adding that many of his colleagues were depressed and depressed. He emphasized that some people have lost their will to live.
The BBC reported that Juan was released in mid-November after Maduro's arrest. ordered To “review” and “revise” parts of a detainee's case. Juan is required to appear in a terrorism court in Caracas every 30 days.
“I don't want him to go anywhere by himself. He used to play basketball, go to the gym. I don't want him to go anywhere anymore. What are they going to come looking for? I'm always worried. I'd rather be far away,” the man's father told the BBC.
Christian K. Caruso is a Venezuelan writer who chronicles life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
