“Every day we were told that we were guilty, that we were terrorists, criminals and anti-patriots, simply because we opposed the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro,” testifies Nelson Merino, a Venezuelan activist in exile in Spain, who spoke about his experiences in a “torture center” in Venezuela after the 2024 presidential elections, contested as fraudulent by the opposition and dozens of countries.
In a testimony to The Free Press's Tanya Lukyanova, Nelson Merino spoke about his experiences in the torture center in Tocoron, Venezuela's Aragua state, where he says he spent two months, 18 days and 15 hours after the 2024 presidential election.
The activist recounted that on July 30, 2024, after Maduro's victory was announced, he was detained and indicted on four counts: resisting authority, obstructing public roads, inciting hatred and terrorism.
In the 2024 election, Nicolas Maduro declared himself the winner with 51% of the vote despite opposition leaders and international observers saying Edmundo Gonzalez won the election by a landslide. Maduro has not been recognized as president by the US and the EU, but only by some states such as Russia and China.
“Humiliate” and “Torture”
In the torture center, “I experienced the worst horror I can imagine,” Merino said.
“We were tortured. We did not have access to clean drinking water or adequate food. Medical care was inadequate or delayed, and our rights as citizens were trampled on by the regime's lackeys,” the man claims.
According to the activist, there were over a thousand people of all nationalities, aged between 17 and 80, in the center in Tocoron, and the people held there were not brought before a judge and had no rights.
Every 15 days, the families of the prisoners could bring a 5-liter can of water, five packets of biscuits and a bar of chocolate. “That was it,” says Merino.
“We were humiliated – forced to beg for a mouthful of food or a sip of water. Six people lived in one cell, where we also had to wash and relieve ourselves, without any hygiene. Once a week, on the so-called “rest days”, we were allowed to go out in the sun for only five minutes”, the activist said.
Nelson Merino says the food the prisoners received was often spoiled.
“At best, it was rice that tasted like earth or detergent, topped with raw or half-cooked minced beef (…). We were only allowed to drink water at 5:00 in the morning and 5:00 in the afternoon, and we only had one cup for the whole day,” he added.
“The abuse exceeded all logical limits of human cruelty”
The activist recounts that the guards “enjoyed every act of torture they applied.”
“This was a place where the abuse exceeded all logical limits of human cruelty. We were beaten with sticks, stripped and forced to walk on burning asphalt, electrocuted, deprived of food and sleep, and denied urgent medical care. We were woken up by buckets of cold water – or urine – being thrown at us. Sometimes they knocked on the bars of our cells in the middle of the night to wake up,” Merino added.
He claims that many of his fellow inmates tried to kill themselves.
“The persecution did not end” even after the release
Nelson Merino was released on November 16, 2024, “but the persecution did not end” but “became a more subtle but suffocating form of psychological torture”. He says Venezuelan authorities told him they could jail him again at any time, prompting him to leave the country. The activist confessed that even before he was behind bars he had been “harassed and abused” not only because he was a political dissident, but also because he is part of the LGBT community.
Nelson Merino, now a refugee in Spain, “with an overwhelming need to return to Venezuela, out of love and commitment to freedom and democracy,” said he celebrated the American operation over the weekend when the US military captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to bring them to justice.
He believes that an “act of war” is actually the actions taken by the Maduro regime against its own people, not the US intervention.
“What President Donald Trump did this weekend is the first step in freeing a country that was under a criminal yoke,” Merino added.
On the other hand, the activist pointed out that “the actions taken by the Trump administration are worthy of praise only as long as the mandate of the Venezuelan people is recognized.”
Merino said Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president named Venezuela's interim leader after Maduro's capture, is “the architect of some of the regime's worst crimes.
Captured over the weekend by the US military, Nicolas Maduro was brought to the US, where he is charged with narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of automatic weapons and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess automatic weapons and destructive devices. The Venezuelan president and his wife have pleaded “not guilty,” according to the New York Times. The two remain in custody.
VIDEO What Nicolas Maduro said before the New York judge at his first court appearance. The lawyers did not ask for bail
