The Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), which brings together large and small opposition parties in Venezuela, condemned tonight the death in state custody of political prisoner Víctor Quero, after the Government confirmed that his death occurred almost a year ago and the Prosecutor’s Office announced the start of an investigation.
In a statement published on
“We reject the complicit silence of their institutions,” said the platform, which also joined the demands made by activists and NGOs for a “serious, independent and transparent” investigation to clarify “the circumstances of his arrest, detention, state of health, hospital transfer, death and burial.”
“His family has the right to the truth, to justice and to receive all the information related to this case. We demand the delivery of his mortal remains to his family,” he noted.
Quero had been detained since January 2025 and, according to data from the NGO Foro Penal, the “apparent reason” for his arrest dates back to his institutional past, given that he “supposedly” served in the military in 2023.
His mother, Carmen Navas, had been denouncing the detention and forced disappearance of her son for months, but it was not until this Thursday that the Ministry of the Penitentiary Service confirmed the death of the prisoner.
Through a statement, the State Ministry indicated that Quero had been held in the El Rodeo I prison, near Caracas, since January 3, 2025, and was transferred to a hospital on July 15 of the same year, after presenting “upper digestive bleeding and acute febrile syndrome.”
According to the official text, he died almost ten days later from “acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary thromboembolism.”
The ministry assured that, during his confinement process, Quero “did not provide data on family ties and no family member showed up to request a formal visit.”
Open investigation
Following a wave of demands for an investigation from NGOs, parties and political leaders, the prosecutor’s office announced a criminal investigation and ordered the “prompt exhumation of the body.”
Last Monday, the vice-president of Foro Penal, Gonzalo Himiob, told EFE that Quero was intercepted by officials of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) near a square in Caracas, in January 2025.
Himiob pointed out, based on a report from the NGO, that the “apparent reason” for the detention dates back to Quero’s institutional past, given that he “supposedly” served in the military in 2023.
Machado: it is a “murder”
Venezuela’s opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, described this death directly as “murder.” “Víctor Hugo Quero Navas was detained by the regime on January 3, 2025. They disappeared, tortured and murdered him,” Machado said in a message on social networks.
The opposition member recalled that “for 16 months, Mrs. Carmen, her mother, went from prison to prison in a desperate search” and, she assured, that the “response was mockery and silence” and it was not until today that they reported her death.
“This is not just a tragedy; it is a crime against humanity executed with absolute impunity. It is systematic horror against a nation that demands justice,” he added.
The Human Rights Committee of his Vente Venezuela (VV) party had earlier repudiated in a statement published in X “the tragic news about the murder” of Quero.
In the opinion of the Committee, this “is not an ordinary death”, but “a murder generated by repressive bodies in El Rodeo I (where Quero remained according to the Government), a torture center where cruel and inhuman treatment is committed, and where dozens of Venezuelan and foreign political prisoners currently remain.”
