The Argentine gendarme Nahuel Gallo declared this Thursday before the Argentine Justice that he had suffered torture during his detention in Venezuela, where he was imprisoned between December 2024 and March of this year.
“Today I took a step that cost me a lot: for the first time I told what I experienced in Venezuela,” the gendarme revealed through the X social network.
On April 17, Gallo appeared as a plaintiff in the case being processed in the Argentine federal justice system against Nicolás Maduro and other members of his government for crimes against humanity.
Within the framework of this case, the gendarme gave his testimonial statement before the Court this Thursday.
«Going back to those moments hurts. Reviving them is not easy. But there is something stronger than fear: the truth. And the truth is that the Venezuelan regime does torture, and continues to do so. It is not a speech, it is a reality that many of us have experienced,” Gallo said in X.
Gallo denounced that on December 8, 2024, he was illegitimately deprived of his freedom in Venezuela, where he remained detained until March 2 without being notified of the reasons for his arrest and without the possibility of communicating with his family or accessing legal or consular assistance.
The case for crimes against humanity in Venezuela being processed by the Argentine Justice began in January 2023 based on a complaint from the Argentine Forum for the Defense of Democracy (FADD), which includes Argentine politicians, diplomats, journalists, academics and human rights defenders.
The complaint was filed in Argentina based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows countries to prosecute serious crimes against human rights regardless of where they were committed and the nationality of the perpetrator or victim.
In June 2023, the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) filed another complaint before the Argentine Justice against members of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) on behalf of relatives of two homicide victims, now under the sponsorship of the InterJust organization.
All the complaints were integrated into the same judicial case processed by Federal Court 2 of Buenos Aires, led by Judge Sebastián Ramos, with the intervention of federal prosecutor Carlos Stornelli.
On September 23, 2024, Chamber 1 of the Federal Criminal and Correctional Chamber ordered that Judge Ramos order the international capture of Maduro, his Minister of the Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, and fourteen other officials for crimes against humanity committed in Venezuela against the civilian population since at least 2014.
After the capture of Maduro by the United States on January 3, Judge Ramos requested on February 4 that the former president be extradited to Argentina.
