TL:DR
- Following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, many prisoners were released from El Helicoide prison.
- Former inmates describe horrific torture, including beatings and rape; methods like ‘the Russian’ drive inmates to madness.
- Reports of unsanitary conditions and extensive human rights violations persist.
- Human Rights Watch highlights limited family visitation rights.
- Critics have long called for the prison’s closure, which is now underway after Maduro’s ousting.
Inside Maduros ‘hell on earth’ Venezuelan prison where inmates ‘are electrocuted and starved’
In Caracas, a former shopping centre-turned-prison has towered over Venezuelans for decades.
Since the US captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro weeks ago, many political prisoners inside El Helicoide have been released, and are sharing details of what goes on inside the ‘hellish’ jail.
Inmates told of being allegedly strung up, beaten and raped – with many having bags of human faeces on their heads for hours.
One torture method, known as ‘the Russian’, saw inmates put into windowless cells painted bright white with lights that never turned off – driving them insane.
Former inmates told the Telegraph the lights only flickered off if a prisoner was being electrocuted in another room.
Rosmit Mantilla is an opposition politician in Venezuela who said those inside were raped with rifles and electrocuted on their eyeballs.
‘Almost all were hung up like dead fish whilst they tortured them,’ he said.
‘Every morning, we would wake up and see prisoners lying on the floor who had been taken away at night and brought back tortured, some unconscious, covered in blood or half dead.’
Mr Mantilla recalled urinating in the same place where he kept his food, because there was no space to even lie down.
One activist who spent more than two years inside El Helicoide told the Financial Times a guard told him ‘welcome to hell’ as he entered the building.
Victor Navarro was imprisoned for six months in 2018, and told the New York Times he was held in a 13×13 foot cell with 16 others, including minors, journalists and students who protested against Maduro.
After capturing Maduro, President Donald Trump said he was closing down a ‘torture’ chamber in Caracas.
Shortly after, the interim President of Venezuela, appointed by Trump, Delcy Rodriguez, announced a large release of prisoners from El Helicoide.
There have been calls to shut down the prison for years, which haven’t come to fruition until now, after Maduro was ousted.
Former prisoner Navarro said: ‘I believe every prisoner released deserves a celebration. But I cannot celebrate until everyone is free.’
How did El Helicoide come to be?
Though it’s known as a torture prison now, original plans for the building saw architects draw up 300 shops, eight cinemas, a hotel and a show palace.
It dates back to the 1950s, and was a squatter’s complex until the government took it over in 1975.
In 2010, it was made into a prison for Venezuela’s feared secret police, who hunt down opposition activists and torture them.
Some 18,000 people have been arrested under Maduro’s reign for opposing his government, many of whom were sent to El Helicoide.
In August, Human Rights Watch found that prisons like Helicoide in Venezuela restricted the ability of families to visit and deliver food.
A UN team representative who went to El Helicoide, Francisco Cox, said the prison was ‘brutal’.
He found unsanitary conditions, sexual violence against women prisoners and torture methods.