00:00Weeks after his release from prison, Venezuelan peasant leader Carlos Alberto Azuaje is back protesting on the streets.
00:08He joined families of political prisoners in Caracas on Saturday to demand their release.
00:13Despite threats that speaking out could return him to prison, Azuaje recounted what he described as systematic torture while in detention.
00:20In there, it looks like a baseball school. The guards with bats, the directors with bats, the deputy director with a bat.
00:30They drag them across the floor and just the sound of the bat makes the prisoner feel terror.
00:35When the director arrives and approaches a prisoner, you see, like in the movies, the prisoner trembles because when that man comes close, it's to beat him.
00:44Everyone who's getting out of Venezuelan prisons is threatened that if they make any kind of statement, they could go back to jail.
00:52We all come out with conditions. But like I said before, I'm not going to stay silent about everything I saw in there.
00:58Because if a person stays quiet to save themselves, I'd be failing to help more than 1,000 people who are being tortured inside.
01:05So I'm sacrificing myself so the truth about what's happening in there becomes known.
01:10Accused of conspiracy charges, Azuaje was arrested in December 2024.
01:15His defenders called it a politically motivated detention without proper legal defense.
01:20When they proposed new amnesty law in Venezuela, Azuaje hopes that more political prisoners will be released soon.
01:28This new law is a huge hope for everyone because this law will result in the release of the more than 1,000 political prisoners who remain.
01:36So we'd be working for the others. And they'll say, well, there are people who committed crimes, who did this.
01:44But almost all of them had their right to defense violated.
01:48They weren't allowed private lawyers. And all that means that people, even if guilty, have a right to their freedom.
01:56The Venezuelan government has always denied holding political prisoners.
02:00You know, but since they were in the Lub織
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