The Government of Venezuela has reported the death of five prisoners during a riot that occurred on Monday in the Yare III prison, located in a town in the Valles del Tuy, on the outskirts of Caracas. The confirmation by the Ministry of Penitentiary Services, after a weekend in which relatives and human rights defenders denounced irregular situations in the prison.
In a statement they assured that the “maximum security” establishment is intended to protect “negative leaders and members of criminal gangs.” There are also several political prisoners in this facility who are still waiting to benefit from the amnesty measures. According to official information, the dead were identified as Keivin Matamoros, Eliécer Córdoba, Erkin Ramos, José Andrade and Jean Carlos Jiménez. It is not specified how they died.
Since January they have demanded proof of life for the rest of the detainees. The women have knocked on the gate to demand information and have protested at the entrance to the prison without success. “They are killing them,” said some of the banners they carried. At the end of Tuesday afternoon, some of them began to receive calls from the detainees in which they assured that they were fine.
On Sunday, visits were suspended and a security fence was deployed in the surrounding area due to the confrontation between common prisoners, due to the transfer of a group of detainees to this facility. Those close to the detainees indicated that the riot also left people injured by firearms.
Before the ministry’s statement, the Prosecutor’s Office had announced the opening of an investigation into the events recorded in Yare III – without reporting the deaths. The investigations were entrusted to a commission of officials from the Human Rights Directorate. Some sources claim that the tension arose due to the transfer of a group of detainees to this area.
The serious situation experienced by prisoners in Venezuela has been exposed by the revelations of politically persecuted people who have been released. Discontent over the conditions of confinement and mistreatment by guards is increasing. Last week, the Public Ministry, to which Larry Devoe has recently been appointed, paid a visit to the Rodeo I Penitentiary Center to verify the conditions following a protest by foreign prisoners. According to the institution, they confirmed that “the protocols applied in the prison complied with human rights standards.”
The Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, however, reported this week that in less than 24 hours two people deprived of liberty died in module 4 of the Rodeo due to respiratory arrest and lack of medical attention. “Two deaths in the same prison complex, in less than 24 hours, cannot be understood as isolated events, but as part of a systematic pattern of abandonment,” the NGO says in a statement. “Rodeo IV thus joins a prison system marked by extreme overcrowding, where prisoners survive in unsanitary conditions, without regular access to drinking water or adequate food, with non-existent or delayed medical care, and exposed to diseases that spread uncontrollably.”
The Government maintains total control over the country’s prisons, under what it calls the penitentiary regime. Until 2023, some facilities such as the Tocorón —— and Tocuyito prisons were under the control of the leaders of the criminal groups, when the Government carried out a military takeover of the prisons, although it did not arrest any of its ringleaders.
In recent weeks, human rights defenders have demanded that the Minister of Penitentiary Services, Julio García Zerpa, be dismissed, in addition to a general pardon for all remaining political prisoners: between 400 and 600, according to different organizations. Appointed by Nicolás Maduro in 2024, García Zerpa – who has just been a deputy of the National Assembly – has not been among the cabinet change priorities of the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.
His departure was one of the demands made by a group during a meeting with the new ombudsman, Eglée González Lobato, last week, as well as the demand for the entry of international organizations such as the Red Cross and representatives of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights who are in Caracas. “I was in Yare III and I attest that it is a camp of torture and cruel treatment. None of the prisoners even had access to a nail clipper. We demand an international investigation,” lawyer Eduardo Torres, a former political prisoner, said by telephone from the surroundings of the prison.
