Cuban agents trained Maduro's officials in torture techniques

Cuban agents trained officials from Nicolás Maduro's regime in Venezuela in torture techniques and participated in the mistreatment of Venezuelan detainees, the Casla Institute revealed in a recent report.

Cubans give orders within Venezuelan intelligence agencies and taught officials how to execute a successful torture session, stated former officials interviewed by Casla for a study of crimes against humanity in 2021, quoted by El Nuevo Herald.

"In the case of torture of [Venezuelan] political prisoners, some have been left practically dead, but have managed to revive them. All this under the psychological terror that the other detainees suffer when they hear the screams of the victim or the hurried movement of the officials who see that the tortured person could die," explains the report by the human rights organization.

"The Cubans go down to the torture cells and observe, and when they see that the officials are unable to get anything out of him, they go into the room and start asking the victim questions," said one of the interviewees.

When the Cubans "saw that the victim did not respond to the questions they asked, they themselves took the object to torture and went crazy and began to beat, to torture the victim, without caring about anything,” said Venezuelan intelligence officers, the source added. The envoys from the island are generally dressed in civilian clothes.

Despite the efforts of Cuban instructors to teach physical and psychological limits in torture sessions, some prisoners in Venezuela have died in interrogations or collapsed in court.

Testimonies gathered by the Casla Institute indicate that many repressors of the Chavez government have received training in Cuba, where they study ideology, intelligence methodology, counterintelligence, repression, and torture methods—a "curriculum" useful for officers to advance in the Maduro regime. Among the advanced students of the Cuban agents are the officers of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).

A Venezuelan official told the Casla Institute that Cuban colonels gave instructions to the heads of the DGCIM on the importance of neutralizing "people who made any kind of comments against the government within the opposition and in the military bases and forts."

The Cubans were taught how to document false accusations by planting evidence and executing false procedures, among other methods, according to the report described by El Nuevo Herald.

"These are part of the courses given and the order was that even if they did not have all the elements to say that the suspect or suspects were doing something against the government, it was to be presumed that this was the case. This materialized in the planting of weaponry, telephones, setting up conspiratorial WhatsApp groups, false text messages, all to incriminate the people they wanted to neutralize," the report states.

The Cubans advise to involve family members in order to exert pressure on detainees and motivate them to plead guilty. The counterintelligence manual used in Venezuela was elaborated in the communist island and the professors emphasize the "usefulness" it has proven to have in maintaining Castroism, added the media. 

"The Cubans tell us things like: 'you can see that these are the same methods that have been used in Cuba and in all these years we have never been overthrown, we have always remained in power, and all thanks to this work that we do of counterintelligence and here we bring it to you," said one of the officials who gave testimony.

"Once again the evidence of the direct link between the criminal dictatorship of Castro and Diaz-Canel with the Maduro narco-regime is undeniable. It is confirmed: that Maduro's murderous dictatorship benefits from the regime in Cuba," said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on Twitter after the Casla Institute report was released.