AFP, BARINAS, Venezuela
Hundreds of inmates on Sunday took control of a prison in western Venezuela, claiming they were tortured and demanding its director be fired.Large columns of smoke from burning mattresses and sheets rose from the prison in the city of Barinas as inmates gathered on the roof, chanting: “No more torture,” a reporter observed.They hung banners with messages like “SOS” and “They are torturing us.”
Fire and smoke rise from burning mattresses as inmates gather on the rooftop of the Barinas Judicial Internment Center during a protest calling for the removal of the prison’s director in Barinas, Venezuela, on Sunday.
Officers armed with shields surrounded the Barinas Judicial Detention Center, about 500km from the capital, Caracas.Dozens of family members waited anxiously nearby.
Yelitza Arrollo said that she has not heard from her son, an inmate at the detention center, since May 8.“They are suffering because they are beating them terribly, torturing them, pouring cold water on them, electrocuting them, setting them on fire, mistreating them terribly,” she said outside the prison. “We want the director removed.”Relatives said several of the inmates were injured.About “1,200 men and more than 100 women incarcerated at the Barinas Judicial Detention Center have gone on strike,” the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons (OVP), a humanitarian group, said in a social media post.The government ministry that runs the prisons “is ignoring the inmates, who have been denouncing mistreatment for over a week. They are not being listened to; on the contrary, they are being shot at and tear-gassed,” OVP said.For years, activists have criticized overcrowding, limited food and a lack of medical care in Venezuelan prisons, alongside what they claim are systematic human rights violations.
