Jonatan Palacios, freed on Monday after spending 930 days in a hellish Venezuelan jail for tweeting a photograph a authorities official discovered offensive, mentioned he usually wished for dying throughout his ordeal, overpowered by what he considers a heinous act of injustice dedicated towards him and the assumption that there isn’t a holding accountable these accountable.
“I had already given up living,” Palacios advised the Miami Herald from Colombia. “I did not want to live under those circumstances and I wanted to die; many times I wished for death during this nightmare”.
The animal activist and former Miami resident mentioned there’s little or no room for hope on the Santa Ana jail the place he was held, within the western state of Tachira. Fed poorly, prisoners at instances must pay bribes to acquire meals and every so often resort to killing cats, dogs or pigeons.
Having devoted his life to the safety of animals, Palacios mentioned he instantly tried to help the strays operating free contained in the jail, however usually to no avail given the starvation contained in the jail partitions. He was capable of maintain 4 cats with him outdoors the jail that are actually with him in Colombia. “The only thing that I took with me when I left Venezuela were those four cats”.
But worse than the fixed starvation and the outbreak of sicknesses plaguing the inmates who’re left with out medical consideration is the truth that numerous them are literally harmless of committing crimes apart from offending, or in any other case getting in the best way of, regime officers.
“It is terrifying what I lived inside that prison, what I experienced every day and what I leave behind: all those innocent people that are dying due to malnutrition, due to diseases with no medical attention. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say that it is simply madness; what I lived in Venezuela is terrifying”, he mentioned.
The tragic chain of occasions that led to Palacios’ imprisonment started in January 2021, when he acquired information that the car occupied by members of the family and employees of his animal shelter had fallen off a cliff, killing three folks, together with his 4-year-old adopted daughter.
He later came upon that night time that the accident was attributable to tanker vehicles touring illegally at night time within the mountainous street with their headlights turned off to keep away from detection.
Angered by his tragic loss, Palacios initiated a denunciation marketing campaign by way of social media asking officers to carry accountable the people who had prompted the accident. But as a substitute of justice, Palacios’ public denunciations landed him in jail. The purpose? The vehicles, which belonged to the state-run oil firm PDVSA, had been carrying gas for a smuggling ring headed by a high-ranking authorities official.
The remaining straw was when Palacios tweeted a photograph of the nation’s legal professional common, Tarek Saab, posing subsequent to a monkey, whereas protesting his lack of motion within the case.
Palacios was arrested and tortured and despatched to jail on a dozen totally different costs, for which there have been no actual proof. In the tip, it was the image of Saab posing with the monkey posted in social media for which he was convicted.
“I was found guilty of ‘insulting a person invested with public authority’, that is a crime that does not exist in the Venezuelan law,” Palacios mentioned. The state of affairs is much more grievous contemplating that the photograph posted in X, previously often known as Twitter, had beforehand been posted by Saab himself and that Palacios had solely added the cutline, “What do you think?”
Palacios is free solely as a result of the Colombian authorities lastly obtained concerned in his case, because of the actions taken by Colombian Sen. Andrea Padilla Villarraga, one other animal lover, on his behalf. Efforts undertaken by Padilla led to a gathering held final week between the Colombian ambassador to Venezuela, Milton Rengifo Hernández, with Saab, who agreed to free the activist.
With the choice, Saab’s function within the case went full circle, going from the allegedly aggrieved, to prosecutor, to evaluate and jury, an additional signal that legal guidelines and authorized process has little weight in judicial choices in Venezuela, Palacios mentioned.
While comfortable he’s not in jail, Palacios mentioned he’s having a tough time adjusting to his new actuality, including that he needs the Colombian authorities to turn out to be conscious that tons of of Colombians are at the moment unjustly detained in Venezuela.
He mentioned that what occurred to him ought to be taken as proof that justice is non-existent in Venezuela.
“The entire system is corrupt. Everything moves on corruption. Without it, nothing gets done,” he mentioned. “Officials use their ID cards, their shields and their weapons to destroy lives. They destroy hundreds of them every day.”
