The Venezuelan Intelligence Chief's Mocking Response to a Detained Captain: “If you don't want to talk it doesn't matter, because where you're going they'll make you talk, whether you want to or not”

If active army captain Alfredo Saba Peña Díaz thought to make any money by selling a “rusty type two component”, part of an explosive used in the exploitation of gold, he ended up imprisoned, tortured, accused of trying to place an explosive in the Miraflores Palace, although he was performing military duties nearly a thousand kilometers away from there, in Táchira. The Criminal Forum refused to defend it on the grounds that it is not a political case. And although he is an active officer, he is not being tried by a military court but by a Terrorist court.

His case is fraught with a series of irregularities, violation of due process and brutal torture; file numbers: the first preliminary 4CT - 045-20; the second trial: 2 JT-021-21. The judge, the medical examiner, the officials, they all claim to follow orders. In court he declared as if he were the official who arrested him, another who was actually one of those who tortured him.

“The day the Dgcim arrested me, they handcuffed me, put on a black hood and transferred me to the headquarters of the Dgcim in San Cristobal. I was taken to the office of the director of the DGCIM in the region nicknamed Homer, to whom they handed over the belongings that I had been stripped of: two telephones (from different telephone companies), personal documents (military card, identity card, driver's license and circulation license), the military graduation ring and a silver chain”.

“General Homer asked me for the security keys to my mobile phones and I refused. He told me to give him the keys or else he would forcibly remove them from me. I asked for the right to a lawyer and a phone call to communicate with my family; he mocked that and three officials subdued me and forced me to put my fingerprint on the phones and unlock them. After reviewing them, he asked why he had deleted the messages, but he didn't know what he meant. He told me: 'Captain where you are there is no right to a lawyer and if you don't want to talk it doesn't matter, because where you are going they will make you talk whether you want to or not'. He got up and ordered me to be taken to the brig.”

“That night I was taken out several times for interrogation. I noticed that on a table there were belongings in my room; one of the officials told me that my room had been raided. Again I applied for my right to a lawyer, but they refused.”

Detention and torture

From the Dgcim San Cristóbal they transfer it to the main headquarters of Dgcim Caracas. “I was handed over to the Special Division, where I was received by Captain Carla Da'Silva alias La Negra, two officials nicknamed El Chaca and El Piraña, who would later become my torturers.”

A complaint made to international organizations reads that the captain was asked about a captain (Soranyi Salazar Maldonado) and a Cicpc commissioner (Rigoberto Moreno Carmona).

As described in the complaint, which is being prosecuted internationally, the captain was also tortured “by four other officials, including a lieutenant and a sergeant of the National Guard nicknamed El Guajiro. In the room they use for interrogation and torture, alias El Chaca tells me not to waste your time and tell you where you got the explosive. When I told him that I don't know what he is talking about and that I won't say anything without a lawyer present, he took out a phone and showed me some videos; one of the waiter Dany Castillo, who was beaten and said that Jennifer Osuna had given the material to him and that it was to give it to a family member who worked with a gold mine in Ciudad Bolivar. Another was from Jennifer Osuna saying that I had given it to her to sell it to some miners.”

“When I said I didn't know what they were talking about and again asked for a lawyer and a call, the official replied that I was being arrested for attempting to commit a terrorist act against the State, put on my handcuffs, tied my feet and legs with two straps, and they laid me down. At that moment the captain alias La Negra came in, they lifted me to my knees and the sergeant alias El Guajiro began to beat me with his fists in the ears until I was unconscious; he repeated that several times, while telling me offenses, asking about the explosive and who was paying me for the terrorist attack”.

“They put a plastic bag over my head, repeating it all day, sometimes putting water in the bag to suffocate and choke. The last tortures of the day were stronger because I refused to say what they wanted. The asphyxiation attempt added pressure on my arms, taking them from the back to the top of my head to remove a shoulder. Alias La Negra pulled me down my pants and with a wooden stick he hit me several times in the ass saying things and making fun of what they were doing to me.”

“Finally they put me on my knees, they described the house where my mother lived and they warned me that if I didn't recognize that the explosive was mine, the consequences would be paid by my mother, assuring that they had it on the patrol outside the DGCIM. That's how I was forced to make the video they asked me to say that the material was mine to sell to a miner. Even so, they left me on the roof all night, during which several times a lieutenant came in and beat me and asked me about a van I had in the photo in the gallery on my phone.”

What a judge

When he was taken to the Investigations, Scientific, Criminal and Criminal Corps (Cicpc) the next day, according to the report on Captain Alfredo Saba Peña Díaz, he says he was dragged down the avenue. The CICPC official told the DGCIM that if he kept beating him he would not receive him; they report him as a terrorist and send him for a forensic medical examination. The captain revealed to his defense that the coroner who saw him that day told him that, although he was beaten, he could not put that in the report.

The officer is returned to the DGCIM. The next transfer was to be presented in court. Judge José Macsimino Márquez García, according to Peña Díaz's complaint, did not initially identify himself, but asked if he had been beaten. “My answer was yes and he told me not to worry that this was normal in these cases and that he would give the order not to be beaten anymore. He went into an office from which he later left to identify himself as a judge and as the one who would hold the hearing.”

“The judge asked me if I wanted to testify and I said yes, because hours before leaving the DGCIM, Captain Carla Da'Silva assured me that they had already spoken to the Judge so that I could make a statement and they placed the misdemeanor “illicit carrying of arms” with a measure under presentation. I did so but they deceived me and the judge, at the end of the hearing, said that I had the crimes of terrorism, arms trafficking and association to commit crimes.”

“When the hearing ended the Judge asks me 'do you know what an order is? ' , I answered yes. 'Well, I know you're innocent, but I'm following orders. ' I asked him why that show if he already had a warrant. They transferred me to the DGCIM although the detention order was for Ramo Verde, but in Dgcim but they had several days asking me where the van was and asking for money.”

“Days later they took me to the place called La Pecera, handcuffed with my hands behind and with a folder with a shot in the eyes; you have to drag yourself for some movement or need. I spent 45 days or more without communication with anyone, not even my mom knew what was going on.”

“Nor did I have the right to a trusted lawyer, only to a public defender who appeared twice at DGCIM, to tell me that I was not obliged to go to talk to the detainee, but that the crimes could be taken away from me if I paid 30,000 dollars, that is, 10,000 for each crime. After 45 days they allowed me a 30-second call and a 30-minute visit.”

“Days later I was taken to the preliminary hearing; I noticed that Judge Márquez was wearing a bulletproof vest and a gun. Lucia was upset and asked me if the lawyer who was outside was from the Criminal Forum, I answered that I did not, but that I wanted a trusted lawyer since I did not trust the public defender. He was even more altered and replied that for this case there was no authorization to have a private lawyer and less from the Criminal Forum.”

“I refused to accept the public defender and the judge allegedly telephoned Maikel Moreno to ask him for permission; after he closed the call he said that he was going to allow the lawyer to pass, but that if he was from the Criminal Forum I would suspend my hearing. The judge says that there are evidence for a conviction, but that if I assumed I could reduce the sentence by 20 years, I replied that even crazy would not accept something like that. The judge and the prosecutor went to an office, from which they left to tell me that if I assumed the facts they could lower me to 18 years in prison, I answered no and told me to leave for trial and receive a 25-year sentence.” Thus ended the hearing and he was sent to the Court of Judge Grendy Alejandra Duque Carvajal.

It wasn't explosive

Active Army Captain Alfredo Saba Peña Díaz graduated from the Venezuelan Military Academy on December 11, 2008 as a graduate in Military Sciences and Arts, in the last promotion he had in the Army for the transition at age 4. That promotion is the only one that reached 4 and a half years old. Peña Díaz was in special units during his military career, first in the paratroopers, then in the two special forces units in Zulia and Bolivar.

He is sent to perform duties in the Presidential Guard of Honor or Military House as a security officer until his transfer to Táchira as a logistics officer of the 21st Infantry Brigade, under the command of General José Gregorio Martínez Campo, when he was arrested on December 19, 2020. Although government propaganda media have said that, at the time of his capture, he was an official at the Miraflores Palace, he was actually a year and a half in San Cristobal.

What Peña Díaz has denounced is that months before his capture, Jennifer Carolina Osuna Márquez, with whom he has a daughter and with whom he lived a long time ago, calls him to tell him that Dany José Castillo García, a waiter at the Miraflores Palace has a family member working in the mines of Ciudad Bolivar with a government company and that he needs red mercury, so he thought the captain could get it. His answer was that it was crazy. A day later he insists on calling to ask if he could offer his friend “the bugs he had in the house and that go boom”.

The officer said that at that time he did not understand what Osuna meant, but that the following week he is going to bring supplies to his daughter and there he talks to his ex-partner who tells him that the interested person who works in the mining company in Ciudad Bolivar needed the type two component that a friend gave him a long time ago. “But Jennifer, most likely that won't work and you have to be clear with that guy because that's too old.”

Jennifer Osuna, who has been a stewardess in the office of the presidency for 12 years, is a friend of the waiter Dany José Castillo García, who has been working in Miraflores for 19 years. She insists on telling the captain that the man in the mine needs that and that if she gives them to her he would help her because she has her aunt hospitalized. The officer, fearing to create a problem in the year of his promotion, returns to Táchira. The woman insists days later that she be allowed to go to her house to get the material for the man in the mine, but he tells her that he alone has the key to his house.

At the end of November, while on leave in Caracas, according to the captain told the defense, Osuna asks him to hand over the material to his friend since she is very busy with work and the girl. “I was doubtful and I told Jennifer so, but she assured me that nothing would happen and that she would do nothing to harm me. I gave in and handed that material to Dany Castillo.”

Three weeks later, on December 19, 2020, a commission from the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim) presented itself to the Second Infantry Brigade in San Cristobal and detained it. Then the information is released saying that everything responds to an attempted assassination because they wanted to plant a bomb in the Miraflores Palace.

The captain's defender is Sonia Gomez, who must have insisted that the material that Captain Peña Diaz gave to Jennifer Osuna's friend is not an explosive but a type two component and that in her expertise she says it was in poor preservation and rusty condition, so the material was destroyed.

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