52 Time April 6–13, 2020company ’s leadership and arresting five U.S. citi
zens a nd o ne U.S. permanent resident, he was also
hitting back at Washington for its punitive economic
sanctions. The day after their arrest, Maduro de
clared that the arrested executives were “going to
be j udged for being corrupt, for being thieves, trai
tors to the fatherland,” vowing they would be “prop
erl y i mprisoned and should go to the worst j ail t hat
Venezuela has.”
That threat quickly became a reality, according
to those who have visited the men in detention in
Caracas. The men were taken to a military prison
run by the Venezuelan intelligence service, known
as the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Mili
tar ( DGCIM). Pompeo has denounced the DGCIM’s
leadership for “gross violations of human rights,” and
a recent U.N. report accuses it of being “responsible
for arbitrary detentions, ill treatment and t orture of
political opponents and their relatives,” including
electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags, water
boarding, beatings, stress positions and exposure to
extreme temperatures.
The Citgo employees have mainly been held t wo
floors below ground in an overcrowded basement cell,
according to family members who have visited them.
For much of their detention, the lights have been left
on 24 hours a day. In a country plagued by food short
ages, their diet often consisted of rice and p asta t hat
family members estimated totaled only 600 calories
a day. The facility seems to change the rules about
visits a nd a ccess t o t heir b elongings a lmost weekly.Phone calls home are sporadic, often lasting b e
tween 30 seconds and two minutes before the line
goes dead, according to t he families. Sometimes that
is just long enough for the men to list what items
they urgently need. Everything from safe drink
ing water to food and medicine has to be paid for
and provided by the families. They worry much of
it is being confiscated by the guards. Even worse,
over the course of their long detention many of the
men began to develop health conditions, i ncluding
bronchitis, heart issues and complications related
to diabetes.
While Citgo publicly expressed its concerns
after t he a rrests, family members say the company
did l ittle t o p rovide clarity or support for the men’s
fa milies at home. They had to find out about t he a r
rests from friends and the news, not the company.
In the following days they tried and failed to get
Citgo’s lawyers on the phone to find out what the
company was doing to help their detained execu
tives. Even though the businessmen are t echnically
still employed by Citgo—in phone calls with their
children, some of the men weakly joke that they’re
“still on a business trip”—the company stopped
paying their salaries six months after they were ar
rested, the families say.
The s ituation h as forced some of the families to
burn through the men’s retirement savings and even
sell their homes in order to stay afloat while pay
ing for everything the men need in Caracas. Maria
Elena Cardenas, whose h usband Gustavo is amongWorldTOMEU
VADELL
in 2019LEFT: COURTESY VADELL FAMILY; RIGHT: COURTESY TOLEDO FAMILY
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