Juan Requesens, a deputy of the Venezuelan National Assembly, was arrested as a suspect in the Caracas drone attack, an alleged assassination plot on the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The circumstances of his arrest and detention are controversial, and irregularities surround the legal proceedings. Requesens was imprisoned in El Helicoide from his arrest on 7 August 2018, with allegations of torture to coerce a confession, and delays impeding the legal process and hearings until his release on 28 August 2020.
Requesens' detention has been condemned by the National Assembly – as well as international diplomats, politicians and organizations – and large protests have been held in Venezuela demanding that he be freed. His relatives and fellow politicians have stated that he was arrested for criticizing Maduro. The National Assembly condemned the detention of Requesens as a forced disappearance. Voice of America writes that Requesens' detention has become symbolic of human rights abuses in Venezuela.
The Twitter hashtag "#YoMeNiegoARendirme" – Spanish for "I refuse to give up" – became a popular slogan for his case, and a creed for the opposition.
Drone attack
On 4 August 2018 several explosions were heard while Maduro was giving a speech on Avenida Bolívar, Caracas; the explosions were labeled by the Venezuelan government as an assassination attempt, and people in the area were arrested. One of those arrested, Juan Monasterios, was interrogated on video and allegedly implicated Juan Requesens in a plot to assassinate Maduro.
Requesens was a student leader during the 2014 Venezuelan protests against Maduro. At the time of his arrest, he was an opposition leader serving as a deputy for the Justice First party in the Venezuelan National Assembly.
On the day of his arrest, Requesens had given a speech in Venezuela's National Assembly blaming Maduro for causing unrest in the nation, saying: "I refuse to give up, I refuse to kneel in front of those who want to break our morale. Today I can speak from here, tomorrow I do not know. What I want to reaffirm is that we are going to continue doing everything we can to take Nicolás Maduro out of power."
Observers found reason to believe that the supposed attack would be used by the government to justify suppressing the opposition and that Requesens has been a victim of this. The BBC reported on harsher accusations, saying that "some government critics" believed the attack was a farce, with Julio Borges in particular arguing that this was done in order to arbitrarily arrest opposition politicians. Within Latin America, reports look at the speed of proceedings following the attack through a suspicious lens, proposing specific reasons why critics see the attack as designed to allow more government repression. The Brazilian G1 suggests that the almost-immediate connection made by Maduro between the attack and his "same old enemies" (Colombia and the United States), showing no real investigation, strengthened the idea that the attack was a farce, whilst the Peruvian La República does not present a view of why or how the attack happened, but says that the response shows Maduro as "a desperate dictator" who will accuse anyone, and that the most damning evidence is the speed of the police in finding the supposed attackers, as the police force in question is otherwise known for being inefficient.
Arrest
On the evening of 7 August Requesens and his sister, Rafaela Requesens, were detained in their residence by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), Venezuela's intelligence agency. Rafaela – following in her brother's footsteps as the president of the student union at the Central University of Venezuela – was later released, while Juan was arrested. Rafaela said there were fourteen agents who accosted the pair within a minute of arriving at their apartment building; during the arrest, one turned the building's security camera to face the wall. The BBC reported on a tweet showing the closed circuit camera "footage of the two siblings getting out of the lift before being apparently pushed back by armed masked men in uniform". For five days after his arrest, no information was given to Requesens' family or to the public about him or his whereabouts; the family first got a phone call from him on 12 August.
Efecto Cocuyo reported multiple irregularities in the arrest. Requesens was arrested without a warrant, his parliamentary immunity as a legislator was not respected, and his family did not know where he was for five days. The government said that the arrest was made in flagrante delicto, which is reserved for those who are apprehended whilst committing or having obviously just committed a crime; however, Requesens was arrested three days after the supposed attack.
Rafaela later said that their shared home had been broken into and raided by at least forty SEBIN agents who tried to plant evidence.
Prison videos Requesens was held at El Helicoide, a detainment center operated by SEBIN and described by The Guardian as a "high-profile prison for political detainees" where prisoners report "people being beaten, electrocuted, hung by their limbs, forced into stress positions and forced to plunge their face into a bag of faeces and breathe in".
Requesens was interviewed on video and gave a statement which sources say was forced, and with no defense counsel. The Venezuelan Minister of Communication, Jorge Rodríguez, had the video broadcast by national television during a press conference on 10 August. Requesens' father said "that is not my son"; behaviour expert Isabel Pereira Pizani commented that he appeared to be reciting, not speaking for himself.
Rodríguez alleges that Requesens collaborated in the assassination attempt; in the video, Requesens allegedly admits to working with several other people accused of being involved. On video, he says that Julio Borges contacted him asking for "a favour" to "help a person get from Venezuela to Colombia", that the person was Juan Monasterios and that he and Monasterios wrote to a Colombian immigration official, Mauricio Jimenez, who had agreed to help with Monasterios' passage. Requesens gave no details of an attack on Maduro. Rodríguez said that the statements supposedly show the involvement of Julio Borges and former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
In a second video released shortly after the first, Requesens appears dishevelled and in underwear stained with faeces. A third video was shared days later by Maduro, showing what the government claimed was another part of the "confession" from the first video. In the third video, Requesens is seen stating that Borges gave him the contact "Russo [...] who confirmed that Juan Monasterios was already in Colombia"; "Russo" refers to a suspect whose full name is Rayder Alexander Russo Márquez.
El Nacional reported that journalist Javier Mayorca spoke to , a former political prisoner held at El Helicoide, in Peru. Fernández confirmed to the blog Crímenes sin castigo that one of the videos was recorded "in an isolation cell or in the office of Carlos Calderón", a SEBIN head. The other was recorded in "a bathroom for the use of SEBIN agents". Fernández says that the videos were distributed "as part of a campaign to psychologically break Requesens".
Video controversy
When one of his lawyers, Joel García, saw Requesens at the preliminary hearing and mentioned the video confession to him, Requesens said he was unaware of it. , a National Assembly deputy and spokesperson, stated that Requesens told his lawyer "that he did not remember anything, that he does not remember having recorded any video, much less said anything in that video". Because of this, the Venezuelan legal ombudsman said that they would open an inquiry about the video, and neither this video nor any video was submitted as evidence or added to Requesens' file.
García said that his client did remember the second video, and explained that Requesens said guards gave him the stained clothes and told him to wear them so that they could "mock him". Tarek William Saab, de facto Prosecutor General of Venezuela, denied this, saying that the video was a recording of Requesens during a forensic examination performed when he was in prison and that it should not have been released.
Members of the Justice First party, to which Requesens belongs, said with certainty to journalists that Requesens had been drugged to get a statement and that the torture continued to the point of incontinence. They accused the government of drugging and torturing Requesens into making a false confession. The party also said that Requesens had been threatened by his torturers that they would murder his parents and rape his sister. Legislators in opposition to Maduro's government protested against the "humiliation" of Requesens.
Voice of America reported that a clinical analysis concluded there was evidence of "alteration of cognitive conditions that could be associated with the use of drugs that affect consciousness or will, uncoordinated movements, pupillary dilation, as well as loss of autonomic functions such as sphincters". Politician and doctor José Manuel Olivares later suggested the drug was "evidently scopolamine". Borges said in an interview that the video showed Requesens "totally drugged. In these impressive photos you can see that he is [trying to] support himself, cannot hold [himself up], and has dilated pupils." NTN24 said Requesens appeared visibly "drugged, beaten, threatened", and that "as Venezuelans we must feel anger, pain and indignation [at the treatment of Requesens]".
The released a statement saying they had "numerous and very grave objections" to what La Patilla called an "arbitrary and illegal" arrest and an attempt to "stigmatize" the accused. It objected to the dissemination of the videos, an act it described as "obscene, protuberant, impudent, and even boastful". The association said it would seek legal action against the government and those involved in the Requesens case, "once the rule of law has been restored".
Diego Scharifker, a friend of Requesens and a former city council member and student leader from Caracas, called the public airing of the videos "part of a macabre show meant to intimidate the political opposition".
Hearings
Efecto Cocuyo stated that Requesens' first hearing should have occurred within 48 hours, according to Article 44 of the Constitution of Venezuela. Unnecessary delays in hearings have occurred since the original hearing – scheduled for 10 August 2018 – was deferred. At his two-day hearing on 13–14 August, Requesens was represented by lawyers Charity Flores, Alejandra Tosta and Joel García. The charges against him were: Treason Attempted magnicide (assassination of a Head of State) of Nicolás Maduro Attempted murder of seven National Guardsmen Terrorism Conspiracy to commit a crime Repeated incitement of the public Illicit possession of arms and munitions
Requesens declared that he was innocent, was denied bail, and was returned to prison. His bank accounts were frozen and his assets confiscated. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, Venezuela's maximum sentence. Six other alleged participants of the attack on Maduro were present and had their cases heard at the same time.