(Caracas) Forty-seven prisoners who were locked up in a police cell intended for ten people revolted and took two policemen hostage on Sunday near Valencia (center north), announced an NGO which defends the rights of prisoners.
Posted at 10:01 p.m.
“The riot is led by 47 inmates in one of the five cells of this police station where there should be a maximum of 10 people,” said Carolina Giron, director of the often critical Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons (OVP). of government action.
In videos posted on social media, one of the police can be seen being pressed against the bars of the dungeon by several of the prisoners. One of the officers was reportedly injured in the ear.
The detainees of this Bolivarian National Police (PNB) station, located in Los Guayos, in the state of Carabobo (about 160 km from Caracas), denounce human rights violations and procedural delays, according to Mme Giron.
Four family members of the prisoners entered the prison to act as mediators, according to the OVP.
Venezuelan authorities have yet to comment on the incident.
148% of their capacity
The OVP estimates that Venezuelan prisons are at 148% capacity. “Venezuela has a capacity of 20,000 prisoners and there are 32,000 in the prisons, while there are around 35,000 in the police cells,” said Mr.me Giron.
In the Los Guayos dungeons, she added, “there are 251 prisoners and the structure has five dungeons for a theoretical maximum of 40 people. Many sleep standing up.
These remand centers were not designed to hold detainees for more than 72 hours. “And there are people there who are even serving sentences,” the expert warned.
“If their families don’t bring them food, these people don’t eat, they also depend on the medicine they can get. There is no water, garbage is not picked up…”, she says.
The government has repeatedly promised a “humanization” of prisons as the country, one of the most violent in the world, is mired in an unprecedented economic crisis that has seen GDP per capita fall to the level of Haiti.
About fifty detainees were killed during a riot in a prison in Portuguesa (west), on 1er May 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A year earlier, in the same state, 29 other inmates died during a riot at a police station.
On December 31, 2019, another incident claimed the lives of 10 detainees in Cabimas (Zulia, northwest). In March 2018, 68 inmates died during a riot and a fire in a prison in Valencia.