U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Rafael Jose Quero Silva, a Venezuelan ex-military official living in the U.S. accused of repressing and torturing students protesting against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, El Nuevo Herald reported on Sunday.
Quero Silva, a former colonel in Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) and commander of GNB’s Detachment 47, was reportedly under FBI investigation on accusations of committing human rights violations against Venezuelan dissidents protesting the Maduro regime in the Venezuelan state of Lara between 2013 and 2017.
At the time of writing, ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System listed Quero Silva as in custody at ICE’s Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida.
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“Two victims reported him to the FBI. I also denounced him, I spoke with FBI agents and they were investigating him,” José Antonio Colina, a retired Venezuelan serviceman and political exile, told El Nuevo Herald, a Florida-based Spanish-language newspaper, on Sunday.
Colina, who leads a group known as Venezuelans Persecuted Politically in Exile (VEPPEX), said that Quero Silva moved to America with his wife and children and that “presumptively” his father-in-law also resides in the U.S. through an “investor’s visa.”
Colina further asserted that Quero Silva was subject to immigration proceedings. He added that he thought it was “pathetic” that an alleged human rights violator would “hide” in the United States after supporting the Venezuelan socialist regime.
Quero Silva moved to the U.S. and requested political asylum alongside his family at some point in 2017, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Monday citing Venezuelan news outlets. Venezuelan politicians and representatives of civil rights organizations accused Quero Silva repressing and torturing dissidents in the Venezuelan state of Lara during two waves of protests between 2013 and 2014.
Venezuela underwent a period of protests in mid-2013 after late dictator Hugo Chávez died from an undisclosed type of cancer in March 2013. Chávez’s death automatically prompted a snap election in April 2013 that current dictator Nicolás Maduro “won” by a roughly 1.5-percent vote difference. Prior to his death, Chávez appointed Maduro as his vice president in late 2012. This effectively allowed Maduro to assume the interim presidency of Venezuela from the moment of his predecessor’s death.
The significantly narrow “results,” which translated to a roughly 223,000-vote difference, triggered nationwide protests. These demonstration ultimately wound down after “opposition” presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski — who initially contested the results — called for his followers to stop protesting, suggesting that they play salsa music during Maduro’s inauguration instead.
A year later in 2014, the Venezuelan “opposition” called for a new wave of protests known as La Salida (“The Exit”) that sought to oust Maduro and bring an end to the Venezuelan socialist regime. Like the 2013 protests, the 2014 protests – which reportedly left over 40 dead, nearly 500 injured, and over 1,800 arrested – ultimately failed at ousting Maduro. They instead saw the regime and the “opposition” engage in a round of negotiations that did not yield a single meaningful step towards restoring democracy in Venezuela.
Quero Silva was “directly associated” with the arrest and torture of dissidents during both periods of protests, according to VOA. Speaking to the U.S. government-funded broadcaster, Andrés Colmenares, a Venezuelan dissident exiled in Spain, claimed that the FBI had interviewed him in 2019 as a witness in a U.S. probe into Quero Silva’s alleged actions in Venezuela. Colmenares described Quero Silva as a “a very tough character who personally led the repression against civil society” in Lara state between 2013 and 2014.
“Quero Silva was the ringleader who ordered the repression not only of citizen protests, but also of what became known as sieges of private housing developments in cities such as Iribarren and Paravecino, in Lara,” the political exile said. “He was one of those who entered those housing developments with a military tank in front and he in the back with some soldiers, attacking private property, making arbitrary arrests and direct threats against people.”
Colmenares, who leads a Venezuelan civil rights organization known as FUNPAZ, told VOA that the group has requested that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and bipartisan U.S. senators act to prevent Quero Silva from being deported to Venezuela. They have instead called for him to stand trial in America.
“As an organization and as victims, we are afraid that if he is deported to Venezuela, he will be received as a hero or his crimes will go unpunished. We do not trust Venezuelan justice at all,” Colmenares said.
In 2018, Venezuelan journalist Doricer Alvarado denounced Quero Silva’s participation as a soap opera extra for a Hispanic television network in Miami, in which he played the role of a policeman. Alvarado claimed that spotting the ex-military official at events in Florida in 2017 made her feel nervous because of the previous persecution she said she endured while reporting on Quero Silva and the 2013-2014 protests in Lara.
“Part of the reason I left Venezuela was because of him,” Alvarado said. “In the midst of the repression, we journalists covering the demonstrations were persecuted by military intelligence.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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