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Tamara Sujú, Venezuelan lawyer and human rights defender, denounced that Matthew Heath, an American political prisoner in Venezuela and former Marine, attempted suicide in the facilities of the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), located in Caracas, due to the torture to which he is subjected.
“He was tortured physically, psychologically and continues to receive white and psychological torture,” Sujú wrote on Twitter.
The lawyer detailed that Heath was transferred to a hospital for treatment. He maintained that the situation was denounced before international instances and explained that political prisoners are tortured silently in the facilities of the DGCIM.
The case of the American political prisoner
The newspaper El Nacional explained that “since September 2020, the American has been held in the prison of the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), in Boleita, Caracas.” The media detailed that the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro accuses Heath of being an alleged “spy.”
In August 2021, El Nacional reported that “The 40-year-old former Marine, arrested in Venezuela in September 2020 at the headquarters of the DGCIM in Boleíta, accused of terrorism, illicit arms trafficking and association to commit a crime, suffers physical and psychological abuse. Heath was accused of attempting to cause an explosion at the El Palito refinery. He was arrested in Falcón.”
In spite of the denunciations made in the last few days, the Government of Joe Biden has not issued any statement on the case of Matthew Heath.
Williams Perdomo es periodista y escritor, especializado en las fuentes Política y Cultura.