On September 22, the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela presented its report A/HRC/60/61 to the UN Human Rights Council, covering the period from July 2024 to August 2025. The Mission concluded firmly: “political persecution is intensifying in Venezuela.”
The repressive escalation seen in the past year—deemed state terrorism by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—is not a random event. It results logically from a systematic criminal policy that has been designed and maintained for over a decade by the highest levels of the Venezuelan state, with a clear objective: “to silence, discourage, and nullify the opposition,” as the Mission has repeatedly indicated since its creation in 2019.
During its five years of investigative work, the Mission has issued at least 145 recommendations to the Venezuelan state, and “none have been met. On the contrary, the regime has deepened its repression and reiterated the systematic commission of grave violations and international crimes for more than a decade.”
At the same time, Maduro’s regime has consolidated an increasingly lethal political terror apparatus that has evolved its strategies for social control, honed its torture methods, and expanded its execution arms.
The Evolution of the Terror Strategy
Between 2014 and 2020, the Chavista repressive apparatus operated under a “hardline” logic: widespread violence, extrajudicial killings, and systematic torture. Its character was primarily reactive, activated in response to major waves of citizen protests in 2014, 2017, and 2019 against Maduro’s regime.
The Mission’s report A/HRC/45/33 (2020) documented it starkly: “State repression resulted in dozens of arbitrary deprivations of life by security forces, arbitrary detentions of actual or perceived opponents, some followed by torture and sexual and gender violence.”
Between 2020 and 2023, as protests declined due to the pandemic, migration, and the deterrent effect of state violence, the Chavista repressive machinery mutated. Without dismantling its shock capabilities, the regime shifted to a model of preventive and permanent control, based on “softer” tactics: selective persecution of trade unionists, journalists, and human rights defenders, as well as intervention in parties and NGOs. The goal was to stifle dissent even before it manifested. The Mission’s report A/HRC/54/57 (2023) warns clearly: “The state’s use of its repressive apparatus has become more selective… the use of softer coercive tactics carries a latent threat.”
In 2024, following the fraudulent presidential election, spontaneous protests among the popular sectors reignited the regime’s harsher response. It became clear, as stated in the Mission’s latest report, that the preventive system did not replace the reactive one; rather, it reinforced it. In response to street protests, the repressive machinery reverted to its most violent mode, resulting in 25 deaths, over 2,200 detentions in just a few weeks, and the arrest and prosecution of at least 218 minors.
Sophistication of Torture Methods
One of the pillars of the Venezuelan regime’s terror strategy is torture. This practice does not represent isolated excesses from uncontrolled officials but rather a deliberate, systematic state policy sustained over time.
Over the past decade, its methods have not only become more brutal but also more strategic. Initially, torture was used to extract information or physically punish detainees, but since 2020, it has transformed into a tool to psychologically break victims, manufacture forced confessions, and produce audiovisual material that justifies arbitrary detentions, criminalizes dissent, and imputes crimes such as “terrorism,” while supporting official narratives about “alleged” conspiracies.
Today, torture combines multiple layers: extreme physical violence, sophisticated forms of psychological torture, inhumane detention conditions, and institutionalized sexual violence. In recent years, it has also led to the deaths of detainees due to lack of medical attention and sexual abuse of confined adolescents. Torture is no longer just a means; it has become the very end of the repressive system, a mechanism designed to destroy the human dignity of the persecuted and sow terror throughout society.
The Gears of the Terror Machinery
As the main execution arms of repression, torture, and extrajudicial killings, the Mission has pointed out a set of civilian and military structures that coordinate under the direct orders of the regime’s power elite. In its report A/HRC/51/43 (2022), the Mission indicates that “Nicolás Maduro, supported by other high-ranking authorities, stands out as the principal architect of the conception, application, and maintenance of a machinery aimed at repressing dissent.”
At the center of this terror machinery is the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), directly subordinate to Maduro and dedicated to the detention, incarceration, and torture of military officials and ex-officials, along with related civilians. Alongside it operates the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), focused on government critics with significant public profiles, opposition politicians, and dissidents. Also involved are the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), including its Strategic and Tactical Actions Directorate DAET (formerly FAES), and the Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigative Corps (CICPC).
These agencies have seen significant growth in their operational resources over the past decade. The DGCIM and SEBIN have received special budgets to train new agents, modernize equipment, and acquire cutting-edge technology through agreements with Russia, Iran, and China. This has been complemented by the opening of new facilities, detention centers, and maximum-security prisons for opponents, as documented in the 2024-2025 report by the Casla Institute.
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The Judicial System: From Passive Complicity to the Execution Arm of Terror Policy
Another key gear in the terror apparatus established in Venezuela has been the judicial system. According to the Mission’s reports, the Judicial Power—progressively subjected to executive control—transitioned from being responsible for omission, facilitating impunity through lack of investigation, to becoming an active accomplice in the regime’s terror policy.
Between 2014 and 2019, as noted in the Mission’s report A/HRC/45/33 (2020), the Judicial Power—including the Prosecutor’s Office—was marked by passive complicity, characterized by negligence and inaction in response to reports of human rights violations. While it did not directly participate in repression, the judiciary legitimized it retroactively, validating arbitrary or retroactive detentions, allowing the military jurisdiction to prosecute and judge civilians, and obeying orders from the executive to issue detainment and search measures, while keeping protesters deprived of liberty.
During the period 2020-2023, the Venezuelan judicial system began to play a more active role in political persecution. In its 2021 report, the Mission indicated that judges and prosecutors, instead of protecting victims, played an important role in the state’s repression against actual or perceived opposition. In 2023, its report A/HRC/54/57 noted that criminal justice was instrumentalized to criminalize critical or opposing voices to the government. It also warned that in that year, the so-called “process as condemnation” was consolidated, a mechanism by which mere accusation and indefinite prolongation of judicial proceedings becomes punishment for the opponent, without the need for a conviction.
In 2024, the Mission’s report A/HRC/57/57 (2024) stated that Attorney General Tarek William Saab “continued to operate as part of the government’s repressive machinery.” A year later, in the report A/HRC/60/61 (2025), the conclusion was more severe, indicating that the Venezuelan judicial system as a whole plays an “essential role in executing the policy of nullification of the opposition.”
Furthermore, the report painted a total collapse of due process in the country: summary, collective, and secret hearings; restrictions on the right to choose a defense; pressures from judges to force confessions for serious crimes such as terrorism; and systematic denial of habeas corpus.
Under intense international pressure today, Nicolás Maduro is desperately trying to dismiss the serious accusations of crimes against humanity, transnational drug trafficking, and corruption against his regime, labeling them as a “disinformation campaign” or “lawfare.”
However, the UN Mission’s reports, conducted independently and rigorously over the past five years, demonstrate an irrefutable reality: the deliberate construction, over a decade, of a political terror system against the Venezuelan people. What is now required is justice for the victims and punishment for those responsible.