United States President Donald Trump said this Tuesday (6) that the El Helicoide detention center in Caracas is being closed following the capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The statement was made during a meeting with Republican parliamentarians in Washington.
“They have a torture chamber right in the middle of Caracas that they are closing,” said Trump when referring to the prison. The president did not, however, detail deadlines for the closure of the site.
According to Trump, the initiative to close the site was being led by Delcy Rodríguez, who took charge of the Venezuelan regime after Maduro’s capture, which took place on Saturday (3). The US president stated that there is cooperation between Caracas authorities and Washington, despite the current leader of the Chavista regime denying any type of direct cooperation with the White House.
El Helicoide is a structure that was originally designed to be a shopping mall in the 1950s. It now houses the headquarters of the Chavista intelligence service and, over the past few years, has become a symbol of the Venezuelan regime’s repression.
According to reports gathered by international organizations, such as the Organization of American States, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, El Helicoide was used for arbitrary arrests, physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment against political prisoners and opponents of the regime.
