The state deprived a former governor of medical care despite clear warning signs

Originally published on Global Voices

Illustration made with AI by Runrunes. Used with permission.

Read our special coverage on Venezuela’s fight for democracy and the political crisis that has unfolded since the 2024 presidential elections, after the documented allegations of electoral fraud.

This is the first installment of a series by Luis Carlos Díaz covering cases of torture, neglect, and cruel treatment against political prisoners, based on the latest report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission. Originally published in Runrunes and translated by Caracas Chronicles.

To kick off this series, it is worth examining how the latest report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Venezuela was constructed. Based on 213 confidential interviews with 121 victims, relatives, and witnesses, as well as forensic data and judicial documents, the report matches the rigorous evidentiary threshold of “reasonable grounds to believe.”

Despite the Venezuelan state’s complete refusal to cooperate, the FFM’s technical findings expose a crucial reality. Following the United States’ military intervention on January 3 and the capture of Nicolás Maduro, interim president Delcy Rodríguez announced cabinet reshuffles, released hundreds of prisoners, and oversaw a decline in long-term detentions.

However, the United Nations (UN) found that at least 18 high-ranking officials previously implicated in human rights violations and crimes against humanity remain in key positions of power or military command, including Diosdado Cabello, Gustavo González López, Alexander Granko Arteaga, and Vladimir Padrino López. The core architecture of state repression remains fully intact, providing the structural context for the individual cases documented in this series.

Before delving into the case of Alfredo Díaz, I want to address a question that often lingers when we discuss the UN reports: What is all this work actually for? What happens to a report like this once it is published?

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission was not created on a whim, nor was it meant to issue a general diagnosis and stop there. It was established by the Human Rights Council under Resolution 42/25 in 2019, with a specific mandate: to document the most serious crimes committed in the country to combat impunity, ensure accountability for those responsible, and secure justice for victims. This carries practical consequences, even if they are not immediate.

The FFM is an investigative body, one of only seven active mechanisms of its kind worldwide. That alone underscores how extraordinary our situation is, and how resilient civil society has been in organizing to secure its renewal on four separate occasions. In October, countries in the Human Rights Council voted to extend its mandate for two additional years.

Whenever the FFM concludes there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that an individual participated in a human rights violation, that finding is preserved in secure databases with case files, testimonies, and evidence. This material is not lost, even if no Venezuelan court is willing to use it.

This documentation has already had real effects outside Venezuela. The report notes, for instance, that a federal court in Argentina issued an extradition request in June 2026 against a Spain-based former Venezuelan military officer linked to the 2014 repression. The court relied on the principle of universal jurisdiction — the legal framework allowing a country to prosecute grave international crimes committed elsewhere, when justice is denied in the country of origin. That officer was named in the 2025 special report on the Bolivarian National Guard.

Furthermore, although Venezuela formally denounced the Rome Statute in July 2026 in an attempt to block cooperation with the International Criminal Court, the FFM’s report clarifies a crucial point: a withdrawal from the ICC does not erase or halt ongoing investigations by the tribunal in The Hague for events that occurred while the statute was still in force for the country. In other words, these reports have allowed us to build, fact by fact, the evidentiary record that may one day support a criminal indictment inside or outside Venezuela. This is why more victims and witnesses should be encouraged to share their stories with the FFM.

With that purpose in mind, reading the case of Alfredo Díaz is well worth the effort. Díaz was a former governor of Nueva Esparta and a regional leader of the Acción Democrática party. SEBIN officers arrested him on November 24, 2024, in Ospino, Portuguesa state, leaving his family completely unaware of his whereabouts for four days. This marked the start of multiple due process violations, including incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance. Charged with “incitement to hatred” and “terrorism,” he spent the remainder of his detention unable to appoint defense counsel of his choice or access his own case file.

What makes this case particularly grave, according to the FFM, is not only the arbitrary detention (a serious crime in itself), but what happened to his health. Before his arrest, Díaz had a history of serious medical conditions, including seizures, an anxiety disorder with paranoid traits, and depression. A medical report from that year included pending orders for pharmacological treatment, a CT scan, and a neurological evaluation. The political persecution he suffered rendered him unable to maintain his medical care.

Witnesses who shared a cell with him reported that he suffered at least two severe medical episodes while incarcerated. One occurred in October 2025 and was characterized by intense pain, muscle stiffness, and disorientation, which medical personnel at El Helicoide diagnosed as “indigestion” and a “stomach issue.” No specialist ever evaluated Díaz, the FFM documented, despite repeated pleas from his family and fellow inmates. Such negligence extends the punishment beyond detainees to their loved ones, who remain impotent to help, forced to advocate from a distance.

On December 6, 2025, at around 5:00 a.m. local time, Díaz experienced the same symptoms. His cellmates’ desperate alarms were met with a delayed response. Díaz was eventually transferred to the facility’s medical area, where staff performed resuscitation maneuvers, but he died shortly after at the University Hospital of Caracas. The official cause of death was listed as an acute myocardial infarction.

The FFM is not asserting that Díaz was beaten to death or that a direct order was issued to let him die. Instead, it points to something that is, in many ways, more difficult for state officials to evade: the sustained lack of specialized medical care, despite clear warning signs — repeated for more than a year — was a contributing factor in his death. This constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life attributable to the state, which inherits a strict obligation to protect the health and life of anyone it takes into custody.

This brings us to the key connection between this case and the core finding mentioned at the start of this series. Díaz was not an isolated case. The FFM also documented the death in custody of Edison José Torres Fernández, a police officer with 24 years of service who was detained for criticizing the government, and whose body bore bruises that went unacknowledged in the official death certificate.

These are distinct stories unfolding within the same detention system and reflecting the same underlying pattern: people incarcerated with known medical conditions left in a coffin, with no one held accountable to date.

Written by Luis Carlos Diaz