Family members of political prisoners held in the El Rodeo I prison near Caracas affirmed on Friday that they will redouble their efforts and protests to demand prison conditions, after denouncing that several detainees were injured during the repression of a protest this week. "This forces us to redouble our efforts because it is evident that they want to continue ending the lives of our own. Soon we will announce an agenda," activist Andreína Baduel told EFE during a vigil outside the prison. Dozens of relatives gathered this Friday at the prison gate, where they have been staying overnight and holding permanent vigils for more than 90 days, demanding their release. The group lit several candles that formed the words "SOS Rodeo I", held up banners demanding the release of all prisoners, and some of the protesters dressed in yellow and wore hoods to demonstrate how detainees are moved from their cells to the visiting area. Baduel recounted that the protest began on Wednesday afternoon when the foreign political prisoners went out into the yard to get some sun and refused to return to their cells in protest of their conditions. In response, the activist said, the guards repressed with blows, threats with firearms, "threw pepper" and tear gas, causing several detainees, including her brother Josnars, to be hospitalized. "I know he is very bad because in addition he had been tortured in El Helicoide and that left him a chronic pulmonary condition, and obviously all night exposed to torture and tear gas, his body collapsed," Baduel said about her brother. Meanwhile, Hiowanka Ávila, sister of detainee Henryberth Rivas, denounced to the press that the detainees are victims of continuous mistreatment and precarious conditions of imprisonment. "They are locked up 23 hours (a day) in their cells with a latrine that emits gases," Ávila assured, who added that many of the detainees have developed skin diseases, otitis, gastrointestinal conditions and pathologies in their lungs. She also recalled that foreign detainees are not allowed to communicate with their families or their embassies, punishments that are sometimes imposed on Venezuelan detainees. "We, the family members, are not going to stop being here until they deliver our relatives," she insisted. This Friday, the Venezuelan Prosecutor's Office assured that it visited El Rodeo I to investigate the incidents and verified the compliance with "procedures and protocols of rigor", despite the denunciations of the families.
