Maduro promotes officers identified in U.N. reports as human rights violators

Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro promoted two relevant officials who have been identified in United Nations (U.N.) reports for their participation in torture, cruel treatment and violation of Human Rights in a Venezuelan military agency.

The two officials have been identified as Alexander Enrique Granko Arteaga, head of the Special Actions Directorate (DAE) of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), and the forensic anthropologist and deputy head of the DAE, Nairobi O'Connor Jackson.

The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, signed the promotion at Maduro’s instructions of 112 new colonels of the Bolivarian National Guard, including Granko and O' Connor.

A branch of the military, the Bolivarian National Guard reports to the Ministries of Defense, Interior, Justice, and Peace. They are officially responsible for “maintaining public order, guarding the exterior of key government installations and prisons, conducting counternarcotics operations, monitoring borders, and providing law enforcement in remote areas,” according to a 2022 report published by the U.S. Department of State.

Both reports from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, an observation force established by the U.N. Human Rights Council, have recorded hundreds of complaints from victims and relatives of human rights violations and torture against political prisoners in Venezuela, carried out in the facilities of the DGCIM and other agencies favored by the regime.

“Increasingly unpopular with citizens, the Maduro regime depended on civilian and military intelligence services, and to a lesser extent, pro-regime armed gangs known as colectivos, to neutralize political opposition and subdue the population,” the 2022 State Dept. report says. “There were reports that members of security forces committed numerous abuses. A September U.N. report detailed the systematic use of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and the Military Counterintelligence Directorate to intimidate and control the activities of political opponents.”

In a Jan. 31, 2021 report published by Diario Las Americas, Casla Institute Executive Director and CEO Tamara Sujú Roa said many Venezuelan military officers considered it an honor to be recruited into the Military Counterintelligence Directorate (DGCIM) because it was a sign the regime trusted their loyalty.

“If they are chosen to be part of the DGCIM [General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence] it is considered that they have a special attribute, which is why for many it is an honor to be chosen to be intelligence officers,” Suju told the Miami based Hispanic language newspaper. “There is the training school within the DGCIM headquarters, and there is the psychological operations school in Fuerte Tiuna. In addition, they send them to take the famous intelligence courses in Cuba, or else the Cuban regime sends its officials to Venezuela to train and offer updates.”

Granko's promotion, which ended on June 29, occurred on the same day that five years ago Lieutenant Commander Rafael Acosta Arévalo was tortured and murdered, one of the cases in which the new colonel of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) appears to have been named.

Granko, sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), by the European Union (EU) and by the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), had already been promoted from first to lieutenant colonel in July 2020.

O'Connor Jackson, a forensic anthropologist and deputy director of DGCIM Special Investigations, was also identified in U.N. reports as one of the cruelest people when carrying out acts of torture.