In Caracas, a former shopping centre-turned-prison has towered over Venezuelans for many years – the headquarters of the key police and infamous for the torture behind its partitions.
For the reason that 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 contained in the ‘hellish’ jail.
Inmates told of being strung up, beaten and raped – with many having bags of human faeces on their heads for hours.
One torture method, referred to as ‘the Russian’, saw inmates put into windowless cells painted vibrant 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 one other room.
Rosmit Mantilla is an opposition politician in Venezuela who said those inside were raped with rifles and electrocuted on their eyeballs.
‘Just about all were hung up like dead fish whilst they tortured them,’ he said.
‘Every morning, we’d get up and see prisoners lying on the ground 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 identical place where he kept his food, because there was no space to even lie down.
One activist who spent greater than two years inside El Helicoide told the Financial Times a guard told him, ‘Welcome to hell’ as he entered the constructing.
Victor Navarro was imprisoned for six months in 2018, and told the Latest York Times he was held in a 13×13 foot cell with 16 others – 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 big 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 imagine every prisoner released deserves a celebration. But I cannot have a good time until everyone seems to be free.’
How did El Helicoide come to be?
Though it’s referred to as a torture prison now, original plans for the constructing saw architects draw up 300 shops, eight cinemas, a hotel and a show palace.
It dates back to the Fifties, and was a squatter’s complex until the federal government took it over in 1975.
In 2010, it was made right into a prison for Venezuela’s feared secret police, who search out opposition activists and torture them.
Some 18,000 people have been arrested under Maduro’s reign for opposing his government, a lot of whom were sent to El Helicoide.
In August, Human Rights Watch found that prisons like Helicoide in Venezuela restricted the flexibility of families to go to 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.
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