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The releases follow the dramatic capture of Maduro by US forces earlier this month and his transfer to face charges in the United States.
18:11, Wed, Jan 14, 2026 Updated: 18:42, Wed, Jan 14, 2026
El Helicoide, located in the heart of Caracas (Image: Getty)
Venezuela’s interim authorities have begun releasing political prisoners from El Helicoide, the infamous Caracas detention facility that became a symbol of state repression and blood-stained torture under Nicolas Maduro’s 11-year rule. The vast, spiral-shaped brutalist structure, originally designed in the 1950s as the world’s first drive-in shopping mall during the country’s oil-fuelled economic boom, was never finished as planned.
Its single entry point and network of unfinished ramps and tunnels instead made it an ideal fortress. By the mid-1980s it had been taken over by intelligence services, and under Maduro it expanded into the regime’s principal site for holding suspected victims. The releases follow the dramatic capture of Maduro by US forces earlier this month and his transfer to face charges in the United States. The new interim leadership, supported by Washington, announced an “important number” of liberations as part of efforts to signal a break with the past and promote national reconciliation.
Nicolas Maduro and wife Cilia Flores in handcuffs in New York (Image: Getty)
The government claimed more than 400 prisoners had been freed nationwide by mid-week. However, independent human rights groups could verify only a fraction of that total.
According to Foro Penal, a Caracas-based NGO, 804 political prisoners remained in custody across the country as of early January, with dozens held at El Helicoide.
Among the first to walk free from the facility were former presidential candidate Enrique Marquez and ex-lawmaker Biagio Pilieri, both close to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
They were removed in unmarked vehicles under conditions that offered little transparency, according to local rights monitors.
As reported in a recent Financial Times investigation by Joe Daniels in Bogotá and Ana Rodríguez Brazón in Caracas, survivors have described El Helicoide as a place of barbaric cruelty.
US President Donald Trump (Image: Getty)
Activist Villca Fernandez, detained there from January 2016 to June 2018, recalled being greeted on arrival with the words “Welcome to hell”.
He endured weeks suspended by his wrists from a metal grate, repeated electrocution including to his genitals, suffocation with plastic bags filled with toxic tear gas, and near-constant hunger and filth.
The sound of guards’ keys, he said, still haunts him, as it invariably signalled that someone was about to be taken for torture.
A United Nations fact-finding mission has documented dedicated areas of the complex used for “cruel punishment and indescribable suffering”, with some detainees forced to sleep on stairwells.
Rights groups report at least one inmate died in custody there.
While the current releases mark an important symbolic shift following Maduro’s ouster, families and NGOs continue to criticise the lack of clear information.
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Many relatives remain without proof of life for loved ones and fear that the process is selective or incomplete.
As Venezuela enters an uncertain transitional period, El Helicoide stands as a concrete reminder of the terror machinery that defined the Maduro era — and a measure of whether the new authorities are prepared to dismantle it fully.
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