The NGO Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) reported this Monday the death of common prisoners Deivi Enrique García and Ovidio José Madriz Mendoza, who were in a prison complex of several buildings known as El Rodeo, in the state of Miranda.
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Regarding Madriz, he indicated that the cause of his death was “also due to respiratory arrest,” but in El Rodeo III.
“Two deaths in the same prison complex, in less than 24 hours, cannot be understood as isolated events but as part of a systematic pattern of abandonment,” he stated.
The OVP stated that El Rodeo IV joins a “penitentiary system marked by extreme overcrowding, where prisoners survive in unsanitary conditions, without regular access to drinking water or adequate food, with non-existent or delayed medical care, and exposed to diseases that spread uncontrollably.”
To this, he continued, are added constant complaints of “mistreatment, negligence, arbitrary punishments, violations of due process and severe restrictions on contact with their families, which deepens abandonment and vulnerability within detention centers.”
Therefore, the organization stated that the Government in charge of Delcy Rodríguez must compensate the victims, while the Prosecutor’s Office and Ombudsman’s Office “are obliged” to “investigate, protect and guarantee rights, not to become spectators of the deterioration of the prison system.”
The NGO indicated that the deaths will be reported to the rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Edgar Stuardo Ralón; to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, in order to “activate the corresponding international mechanisms.”
