Two Former Political Prisoners on Justice and Reconciliation in Venezuela

Lennard Garcia and Gregory Sanabria recount their experiences in Venezuela's El Helicoide prison. The country's interim president has promised its closure along with amnesty for the hundreds of political prisoners still behind bars.

Art by Roxsy Lin

On January 31, Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez released a draft bill announcing the closure of El Helicoide. The prison, in the heart of Caracas, has long been used to house perceived enemies of the state under the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

For families of the nearly 700 political prisoners still held in Venezuela, and for former detainees, the announcement offers a rare if tenuous ray of hope.

Kidnapping, torture

“It was a kidnapping,” recalls Lennard Garcia of the day in 2017 when he was taken by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, or SEBIN as it’s known by its Spanish acronym. Established in 2009 by then President Hugo Chavez, SEBIN is often described as Venezuela’s secret police force. The group is responsible for, among other tasks, the targeting of political opponents.

“They didn’t have a warrant. They just kicked down the door, handcuffed me, put a hood over my head, all in front of my family, and took me away,” Garcia explained in Spanish. “That’s when a very difficult chapter in my story began.”

Then 26, Garcia, who now resides in Texas, was at the time a leader in the student movement that rocked the government of Nicolas Maduro, currently imprisoned in New York after a brazen assault by U.S. military forces on Venezuela in early January.

After his arrest, Garcia was taken to the local SEBIN office in Barinas, a province west of the capital. There, he explains, he was subjected to a violent interrogation that included electric shocks, beatings, and suffocation with a plastic bag. The goal, he notes, was to force him to reveal the names and locations of fellow students involved in the movement.

“What they did to me was a case study in how to dismantle and neutralize the forces we had put out in the streets in favor of freedom and democracy,” explained Garcia.

His experience is not unique.

An anguished wait for freedom

El Helicoide prison, in the heart of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

International bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Council in its most recent report, have thoroughly documented the abuses of the Maduro government. These include arbitrary detentions, along with sleep deprivation, long periods of isolation, incommunicado detention, confinement in punishment cells, sexual violence, and the denial of food and health care.

Maduro’s capture brought hope to many inside the country as well as among the more than 8 million Venezuelans who have fled abroad in recent years.

That hope was overshadowed, however, by the naming of Delcy Rodriguez, a political ally of Maduro’s, as interim president by U.S. officials. Many consider that even with Maduro gone, the regime—and its repressive machinery—remained intact.

There are at least 687 political prisoners still being held inside Venezuela, according to Foro Penal, which documents detentions and advocates for prisoners’ release.

Other organizations, including Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón (Justice, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness), say the true number may be even higher. It notes many families refrain from reporting detentions out of fear of retaliation, both against themselves and their incarcerated loved ones.

On January 8, the Venezuelan government announced it would release a “significant number” of political prisoners. Those releases have proceeded sporadically, however, prolonging the anguish of family members who have camped outside major prisons across the country, waiting for news of their loved ones.

Twenty-seven days after the announcement, Foro Penal reported that, as of February 1, only 344 releases had been verified. Many of those released continue to be subject to conditional measures, such as mandatory check-ins and restrictions on communication with the press.

‘You just asked to be killed’

Like Garcia, Gregory Sanabria, who also now resides in Texas, was a student when he was first detained in 2014. From the state of Táchira, roughly 410 miles from Venezuela’s capital, Sanabria—then just 20-years-old—would spend the next three years and eight months imprisoned in El Helicoide.

“Seconds turn into hours, hours into years, and in the end, you just ask to be killed,” he recalled of his time in the prison.  

Sanabria’s case made national headlines at the time. Miguel Rodríguez Torres, former Minister of the Popular Power for Interior, Justice, and Peace of Venezuela, announced on national television that Sanabria was to be captured.

Sanabria was on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira (UNET) when he received the news. In response, the university chancellor, along with other activists, arranged for him to be sent undercover as a worker to Hacienda La Morusca, a university-owned farm in a rural area known as “La Fría.”

Sanabria recalls the day agents arrived in an unmarked vehicle, pointed a weapon at him, and took him into custody. During interrogation, he was beaten and suffocated with a plastic bag, then slapped repeatedly until he lost consciousness. To awaken him, the agents used electric shocks. He was later hung by his arms in a crucifix position while waiting to be transferred to a detention center in Caracas.

From there, he was brought before a judge, to whom he showed the bruises on his body. The judge acknowledged them and told him that a forensic investigator would look into the abuses. That never happened.

After 11 months, Sanabria was transferred to El Helicoide.

There he spent the first 15 days tied to a door by his foot, “like a dog.” He recalls sleeping on a mat on the floor, defecating in the same plate the agents brought his food in, and urinating in a soda bottle. Once a day, they would untie him and take him to the bathroom to shower and use the toilet, then they’d tie him up again.

On May 16, 2018, he was the victim of a severe beating that caused a skull fracture, a broken nose, and multiple bruises. He was later released in June of that year.

“It often happened that in the early morning I would wake up hearing the people being tortured on the floor above, and you get that chill, that fear comes over you, and your stomach starts to hurt,” he said.

In his darkest moments, his faith kept him going, he added.

‘Peace is not impunity’

In her January 31 announcement Rodriguez’ also included the promise of amnesty for political prisoners. “May this law serve to heal the wounds left by the political confrontation fueled by violence and extremism,” she said in pretaped televised event. “May it serve to redirect justice in our country.”

For Garcia, the words ring hollow. “I welcome amnesty when it means freedom for those who never should have been held hostage behind bars,” he said. “But I cannot accept an amnesty that serves to turn the page without truth or justice.” He continued, “Human rights violations cannot be erased with a law, nor can they be negotiated. Reconciliation is not forgetting, and peace is not impunity.”

Roxsy Lin is a California Local News Fellow with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.