Published at: 02/04/2025 08:00 PM

(Latest News, April 2, 1977)

• During the first government of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), on April 1, 1977, the young Martín Jiménez Tocuyo, accused of being a guerrilla fighter, was hanged in a dungeon in the Maturín Barracks.
• He was subject to intense interrogation by the military authorities and, during a pause in these coercive methods, he was found dead in that barracks.
• According to the version of the authorities in that barracks, they found him hanged just as they were preparing to resume the inquisitorial methods applied to obtain answers from the detainees (torture).
• Forensic doctors supported the version of death by hanging, without going into details about the signs of physical abuse on the body.
• “Hanging” political prisoners was a common practice of State security forces during the two presidencies of CAP, as well as during his tenure as Minister of Internal Relations.
• Thus, José Gregorio Rodríguez, arrested on April 26, 1962 by Digepol agents, committed suicide by jumping from the 6th floor of that police headquarters, after being tortured in front of his wife.
• The painter Juan Pedro Rojas Mollegas, arrested in Caracas on November 19, 1966, was hanged after being interrogated in a tent at the Theater of Operations No. 4, in Cachipo, edo. Monagas.
• Fabricio Ojeda was kidnapped on June 19, 1966 and transferred to the SIFA cells in the White Palace. Three days later, he appeared hanging from a shutter in his cell. This was presented as suicide before the media, however, the symptoms of the severe beatings to which he was subjected revealed that he was beaten to death before being “committed suicide”.
• In the second CAP administration, the artisan Jhonder de Jesús Rivera, a traveling peddler, was hanged hanging from a beam in the headquarters of El Recreo. Later, the autopsy revealed that his death was due to severe blows and bruises received to the head. He also had broken ribs as a result of a heavy beating he was inflicted. The Metropolitan Police was led by the then governor of Caracas, Virgilio Ávila Vivas (Diario de Caracas, Thursday, April 4, 1991).
• Regarding the methods of torture and suicide deployed by the governments of the Fourth Republic, José Vicente Rangel stated that “not even during the time of Pérez Jiménez, did National Security achieve the repressive hierarchy that SIFA and Digepol had.”

Mazo News Team