Venezuela's President Delcy Rodriguez announced her decision to 'promote a general amnesty law that covers the entire period of political violence from 1999 to the present'. She made the announcement on Friday during the opening of the judicial year. In 1999, the period known as 'chavismo' began with the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power, who ruled until 2013, the year of his death, and was succeeded by Maduro. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the judicial year, Rodriguez called on the Commission for Judicial Revolution and the Program for Coexistence and Peace to present the bill to the National Assembly (AN, Parliament) in the 'next few hours', as well as to provide 'maximum collaboration' to the legislative body for its approval. 'Let it be a law that serves to heal the wounds left by political confrontation, from violence, from extremism, that serves to redirect justice in our country and to redirect coexistence among Venezuelans,' added the acting president. Several Venezuelan NGOs have clarified that the proposal for an amnesty is not a 'pardon'.
Venezuela's President Delcy Rodriguez announced that 'El Helicoide' — a structure in Caracas from the 1950s, now used as a detention center for political prisoners — will become a 'social, sports, cultural, and commercial center'. She revealed the proposal after a series of releases were announced a couple of weeks ago. Originally conceived as a shopping center, this facility returned to the spotlight after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke a couple of weeks ago about closing a site of 'tortures' in the Venezuelan capital. In this unfinished building — described as a 'vanguard project' for its futuristic helix design — the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin), and others are located, according to the NGO Foro Penal, which defends political prisoners. El Helicoide is a place where UN organizations have denounced the existence of 'torture chambers' and where several detainees have died in custody, including opposition leader Fernando Albán and General Raúl Isaías Baduel, former Minister of Defense of the late President Hugo Chávez. The word 'Helicoide' has increased in the reports of the UN International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, which investigates alleged human rights violations in the country since 2014. In the mission's first report in 2020, this word appears only twice, compared to about 60 in the 2024 report. In 2023, the mission documented that Venezuelan state authorities have resorted to 'torture and ill-treatment' as methods to 'generate and perpetuate' a 'climate of fear' in Venezuelan civil society. In October 2018, opposition leader Fernando Albán died at El Helicoide, where he was detained for allegedly being involved in a drone attack against Maduro. His family 'could not carry out an independent autopsy or bury his body, despite numerous requests,' indicated the UN International Independent Fact-Finding Mission. The authorities then reported that it was a suicide, although the forensic evidence 'raises doubts about that conclusion,' the mission emphasized. Furthermore, the mission also investigated the death of General and former Minister of Defense Raúl Isaías Baduel, who presumably died of COVID-19 on October 12, 2021, at El Helicoide. PROVEA, an organization dedicated to human rights defense, has warned that 'these people were arbitrarily imprisoned'. The last time an amnesty law was enacted in Venezuela was in December 2007, when Chávez pardoned people involved in the coup attempt against him in 2002. On January 8, the president of the Venezuelan Parliament and chief negotiator of the chavismo, Jorge Rodriguez, announced the release of 'a significant number of people,' including Venezuelans and foreigners, — without specifying the number or conditions — as a 'unilateral gesture' to 'consolidate peace and peaceful coexistence' in the country. According to that NGO's count, there are 711 political prisoners in the country.
