Amnesty International denounced in a new report the “widespread” use of enforced disappearances in Venezuela as part of a “state policy aimed at punishing those who question the government.”

The organization said it considers this practice to be a crime against humanity based on the International Criminal Court’s Rome statute, and called on the ICC to add it to its ongoing investigation on crimes against humanity possibly committed in Venezuela since at least April 2017.

During a press presentation of the report titled “Detentions without a trace,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said that these enforced disappearances do not just constitute a human rights violation, but that they are “a crime against humanity” given it is “carried out as part of a generalized attack against a sector of civil society.”

Pilar Sanmartín, Americas Crisis Coordinator at Amnesty International, explained that these enforced disappearances often start out as arbitrary arrests, in which there is no warrant or the person is not caught in the act of committing a crime that would justify being arrested.

However, in the 15 cases documented in the report, there is a motive for the arrest: “They are people who expressed their dissidence against the government, and they are punished for it.” Out of those 15 documented cases, six are not Venezuelan and 11 continue to be disappeared — this means that, beyond the fact that their arrests have not been documented, authorities have not released any information about their whereabouts or wellbeing.

This is the case of Argentine military police officer Nahuel Gallo, who was arrested on December 8, 2024 when trying to cross the border from Colombia to Venezuela to visit his partner and son. He was accused of conspiracy, and President Nicolás Maduro later said he was allegedly part of a plan to kill Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.

Gallo was then taken to an unknown prison without a warrant and without authorities providing any information to his family. To date, the only apparent evidence that Gallo was alive and well was footage of him the Venezuelan government released in January, in which he was seen walking in what appears to be a prison. 

María Alexandra Gómez, his partner, said on Monday that he has been incommunicated and without legal representation for 218 days, a time in which no arrest warrant or judicial investigation has been opened against him.

Asked by the Herald about this case, representatives of Amnesty International said that Gallo’s case was not included in their report, but that the Argentine offices of the organization are closely following the case and that it is “a perfect example” of a pattern of detentions and enforced disappearances.

This is part of a practice that is known as “hostage diplomacy,” in which Maduro’s government is “arresting foreign people, accusing them of conspiracy against his government without any evidence of it,” Sanmartín said. The goal, she said, is to “punish other governments, justify their conspiracy theories and have something to negotiate with and put pressure on, in this case, the Argentine government.”

“This is a vital pattern and a strategy for Venezuela’s government to negotiate.”

During the press launch, Amnesty also highlighted the Argentine judiciary’s ongoing investigation on Venezuela’s human rights violations using the principle of universal justice. The investigation began in April 2024 and, in September, a federal court ordered Maduro’s international capture. Other countries in the region and the world also have open investigations based on the universal justice principle.

“The International Criminal Court will not have the bandwidth to process the number of atrocious crimes against humanity and violations committed [by Venezuela], so the participation of the international community is key,” Sanmartín said.

Amnesty International considers there is a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population in Venezuela, with crimes against humanity having been committed since at least 2014. According to the new report, following the July 28, 2024 election in which Nicolás Maduro claims to have been reelected as president Amnesty International “observed a dramatic increase in the practice of enforced disappearances by the Venezuelan authorities against dissidents or those perceived as such.”

According to numbers from Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal cited by Amnesty, at the time of finalizing the report, at least 46 people were still disappeared, “possibly forcibly so.” Amnesty said that at least 25 people were killed during protests following the July 2024 election, and authorities acknowledged the arrest of 2,229 people the week after. Although most have been released, 926 people continued to be “arbitrarily deprived of their liberty for political reasons and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment,” the report said.