“After each blow I heard how the agents laughed,” says former Venezuelan political prisoner Jesús Alemán, whose beatings and electric shocks did not subdue his desire to “fight” for those who “are being tortured.”
Alemán is one of the victims who testified this Friday at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, where an independent panel of experts presented its third report on “crimes against humanity” in Venezuela.
This is a summary of the stories of three of them.
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Jesus German
“I was beaten, isolated and tortured,” says this 31-year-old former political prisoner.
He was arrested twice, but the one that marked him the most was the second, on January 18, 2018.
“They covered my face with a black bag that stopped my breathing.”
“They told me that every applause we received at the rallies, in the marches, in the concentrations, in the protests I was going to feel it in blows.”
“Each silence in my interrogation was equivalent to another beating.”
“After each blow I heard how they laughed and enjoyed the moment, their laughter was also torturous.”
“In those moments I could only think about my family, my girlfriend and my entire team.”
“I felt like I was going crazy (…) not knowing if anyone knew my whereabouts.”
“They framed me for crimes I did not commit.”
After all the “tortures” in “the SEBIN”, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, “they transferred me to a common prison.”
“There I saw that the death of a person is worth only one word; Just by making a mistake and saying milk to milk and not calling them cow is a shot in the foot.”
“We lived in inhumane conditions, all our physiological and hygiene needs, when permitted, were done through a duct that collapsed and the water reached up to our calves.”
“I got sick” from scabies and fungus. “The flesh on my fingers was falling apart and I could even see the tendons in my toes.”
“They denied me medical assistance at all times.”
“At the end of all this madness, still in prison (…) they presented me with three scenarios,” “one was the possibility of leaving the country without ever being able to return.”
Before the expatriation, they gave him one last warning: “They told me that I had already been saved on two occasions and I couldn’t tell about the third time because they would kill me directly and the death would be in such a way that they would disappear me, that they would kill me. cut into pieces and play with my organs.”
The gestures that the agents made while they threatened him, he says, drive him “to fight for the more than 270 political prisoners who still remain and who (…) are being tortured.”
Nixon Leal
This former political prisoner who lives in the United States as a political refugee claims to have been “a prisoner of the dictatorship on more than five occasions.” The last one was “the most painful”, in the “DGCIM”, the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence.
Some “men in black” kidnapped me and “tortured me for days.”
One hit me “in the stomach (…) he choked me for periods of time.”
One took “notes,” another “hit me hard in the face (…) said that if I didn’t collaborate he would move up a level.”
“They poured insecticide near my nose and mouth” and “tear gas,” which “caused me to stop breathing.”
“They wanted me to record a video in which I admitted guilt and in turn I had to point out several political leaders to accuse them.”
“Because I refused, one of them (…) stuck three bugs under my fingernails, one yellow, one blue and one red.”
“I wanted to commit suicide (…) I tried to hang myself with my own sweater” but “I couldn’t do it.”
“I was presented before a military court with my face swollen and disfigured by blows.”
“Torture exists, if you don’t believe me, look at my face,” he told the judge.
“They are facing a man who still considers himself a prisoner, because even though my body is in this place, my memory is still distributed” in each of those prisons. Despite that, “they are facing a man with renewed hope that justice can be done.”
Luis de la Sotta
Venezuelan ship captain who, since 2018, was detained for five years, four months and 11 days in the custody of the DGCIM.
“I denounced corruption and politicization within the national armed force in addition to refusing to say the motto of a political party.”
“They put guns to my temple simulating an execution, they beat me with sticks” and “they deprived me of sleep.”
All “my torturers were promoted in military rank by Nicolás Maduro,” the president of Venezuela.
“They insulted me, they made fun of me, they told me they would rape my wife.”
“I was in the insane cell, a torture cell with freezing temperatures, without a mattress, with green panties, without underwear, they gave me food in a container that they threw on the floor, without cutlery, I had to eat with my hands. full of excrement.”
“Sometimes they deprived me of food. I did my solid physiological needs in a plastic bag, if I had one, otherwise I voided on the floor, urinated in a container and only had access to the shower once a week.”
“My wife and children had to flee the day after my arrest since they were looking for them to arrest them.”
“Less than 14 days ago I met them again”
After his case was featured in a report presented to the UN human rights council, he was “forced into a torture room” called “the vertical tomb” because it is “so narrow that you can only remain standing.”