Chopping Fingers Off Hostages

zin0 · #1 ● 11-25-2016, 12:45 AM

On September 8, inmates of a police station in the state of Tachira in Venezuela took twelve people as hostages - ten visited their relatives and two policemen - to protest against prison conditions and demand their transfer to the Penitentiary of Tocorón in the state of Aragua, according to reported by El Universal.

This hostage-taking reveals the chaos of the prison system in Venezuela, demonstrating how the prisoners not only control the prisons, they have also gained practical in pressuring the government to accede to their demands.

On Monday September 24 began circulating on social networks a video in which It showed a group of inmates with another, beaten and subjected, which they cut his right index finger. "At the moment you cry hard, go crazy screaming, you're going to get this knife," threatened the man who recorded the scene.

According to police information, the video comes from the dungeons of Prisons Headquarters Police state of Tachira.

In the video you can see the moment when, under threat of being stabbed, they cut off the finger to the man identified as Commander 33, paramilitary leader.

The video, which went viral and demonstrate control that owns the group of prisoners on their peers, also revealed a system of extortion similar to that exists in prisons in that country. Each family must pay Bs 1,000 per week to ensure that their loved one detainee remains alive.; they call it "paying the cause."

The victim on the video had allegedly requested Bs 600,000. His relatives had agreed only Bs 400,000; the result was the mutilation of his finger.

According to Officials of Politáchira, the man in the video would be a Colombian arrested for alleged paramilitary actions. "The paramilitaries we had them isolated because the Venezuelan prisoners have their anger. The paramilitaries sent to kill thieves and in jail may kill them if we capture a paramilitary "said an effective.

He also added that prisoners presume having killed one of the detainees, because that weekend criminals asked for a sack of lime. This building material is usually used to retard the putrefaction of the corpses. Officials said that prisoners have a 9mm weapon and they fear that kill their companions officers leivy Sira and Miguel Angel Munoz, or women who still held hostage.

So far the authorities have not given an effective response to the situation. Only a pregnant woman was liberated by criminals who expect to be transferred to the prison of Aragua state known as Tocorón. In that place would have been the leader of the riot, nicknamed "El Grillo". Also they request conjugal visits and other benefits.

The former governor of Tachira Cesar Perez Vivas rejected the way this hostage situation has been handled by Governor José Gregorio Vielma Mora.

In his view, "there is nobody to negotiate, they have left it there to a personal wear, there no effort to resolve the conflict ... The political line traced by Vielma Mora is to leave them there, they are consumed."

For the former governor it is necessary to "promote a dialogue with inmates, police and officials from the Ministry of Prisons; Justice System, Courts and Prosecution; to listen to the proposals regarding the procedural delays and overcrowding to which are subjected the prisoners ".