They arrived at dawn, threatening to knock down the door. The family could hear men yelling and footsteps on the roof of the single-room, single-window dwelling. Maria* was in the living room, her husband Kevin* and her 5-year-old son were resting in bed, both with fever symptoms due to Zika, when about 15 armed men in black uniforms came in, their faces covered.

They asked for Kevin. They read his first and last name out; it was written down on a piece of paper. They didn’t ask for an identity card to verify if it was the same person. They didn’t take the time to check if he had any pending criminal charge or showed an arrest warrant. They beat and pushed Maria out of her home with the sick child in her arms. Her husband was beaten and threatened by a group of agents. The shot that went through the left side of his chest killing him at the age of 19 could not be heard. Sometimes they use silencers.

The whole area of Cota 905, southwest of Caracas, experienced an atmosphere of chaos and fear on the morning of May 10, 2016, when the Operation to Liberate and Protect the People (OLP) broke out. The procedure was extended to El Cementerio, El Valle and Coche (popular areas in the municipality of Libertador, the most populated of Caracas). It was the largest OLP to date, with 3,006 police officers in action.

 

Kevin was not the only mortal victim that day. The OLP left nine people dead –four of whom are not listed in police records– among them, Kevin’s brother-in-law, who lived next door. His wife and mother reported that he was murdered when trying to escape. The police threatened to kill the families of those who, they presumed, were linked to the man who is considered the most wanted criminal in the country; the man who controls the corridor that connects Cota 905 with El Valle and El Cementerio: Carlos Luis Revete, known by the nickname of “El Koki”. He’s

The families of Kevin –the agents even made up an alias for him– and his brother-in-law don’t believe their murders were the result of chance or an unintended confusion. They think that living in the area where “El Koki” operates made them targets of the OLP. And that is why they went looking for them. He’s a trophy all the police want to claim.

That same day, the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace Gustavo González López, announced on television the beginning of the Operation to Liberate and Protect the People New Phase (OLP-NF), with a particularity: now, they would be “selective actions” to reorganize and “consolidate peace”. The man who was responsible for citizen security was therefore recognizing that the OLPs were not random procedures. The places and the possible victims were apparently chosen in advance.

The testimonies of those affected and the statements of some government officials showed that the OLPs were not fortuitous actions. In most cases, there was a prior selection of future victims for reasons ranging from personal revenge, protection of interests of the powerful or the military, and territorial displacement of criminal groups to give those territories to the colectivos. Even the sense of “doing justice” played a role.

During these operations, security forces not only carried firearms, high-capacity motorcycles and four-wheel drive vehicles. They also had names and surnames written on paper, photos stored on tablets and smart phones, and anonymous informers. Those are the identity verification methods used by the OLP. “They constitute selective operations that overlook the Venezuelan Constitution and all the rules of police action considered in the Code of Criminal Procedure (COPP),” said Luis Izquiel, lawyer and former Prosecutor at the Attorney-General’s Office.

When the OLP arrived in Boquerón, Carabobo state, on January 29, 2016, officers carried tablets with photos of the people they were looking for. That’s how they identified Daniel*, Julian’s* youngest son. After confirming that he was the person in the photo, they executed him in the house’s yard, according to his father.

The OLP of October 6, 2016 in urbanization 23 de Enero, west of Caracas, also used devices with photos of the potential victims. According to the residents, hooded men used the equipment to find alleged criminals. “When they turned the tablets on, you could see lots of photos. They were looking for people there. The hooded men who were with them (armed civilians known as colectivos), pointed out the homes where the people in the photographs lived.”

The use of images to identify alleged criminals had various manifestations and excesses. Yulibeth* reported that in Barlovento, Miranda state, police officers were walking down the street photographing men who looked younger than 30. “When they saw them together told them to turn around and took their picture. I imagine it was to have them registered.”

This method was used throughout the country. At Cota 905, Camila’s* sons were taken from their home and forced to kneel on the street with their hands behind their heads while their pictures were taken. The officers uploaded them to what they said was a police WhatsApp group, and warned the boys: “If you’re involved, you’re going for that (a way of saying they’re going to be killed).” The procedure was attributed to the Special Actions Force (FAES) of the PNB.

According to witnesses, the photos from social networks or obtained by other means were verified by informers (generally members of the social and political structures of the government or colectivos) and compared with the records of the database of the System of Information and Police Research (SIIPOL), which listed people searched by the authorities, citizens who had criminal records or those who allegedly belonged to a criminal organization.

“They also brought an aparatico (electronic device that connected to an official database) with a screen that displayed photos and information. If they typed an ID number it showed if the person had a criminal record or was wanted for some crime,” Camila added.

On May 10, 2016, the former minister Gustavo González López analyzed the balance of the re-launch of the OLP, and announced the use of drones and other equipment to combat the “destabilizing plans of the right” (an expression frequently used by Government officials to link the political opposition with gang activity).

Drones were used to make photographic records and videos of the residents of an area that would later be visited by the OLP. The men of the images were arrested and questioned by the police. In El Cementerio, Cota 905 and El Valle, residents reported that it was a common practice. Francisco* was approached by men while on his way to work at 5 in the morning. “I was stopped once by the black ones (the PNB) on the boulevard of El Cementerio. They had a picture of me looking out the window of my house. They checked my ID, saw that I was not required by the law and let me go.” The previous afternoon he had seen a drone tour through the neighborhood.

Five months before Kevin’s death and about 150 kilometers from Cota 905 in Caracas, Julián* experienced the same terror as Kevin’s widow, María. On the morning of January 29, 2016, a group of about 20 men in black uniforms, with guns and ski masks, knocked on the door of his house in Boquerón, a village of the municipality of Carlos Arvelo, in the central state of Carabobo. It was the OLP. They forced his wife and daughter out of the house, while others beat their two sons. One of the agents checked if the photo on the tablet screen matched the face of Daniel*, Julian’s youngest boy, who was 16 years old.

They didn’t ask for an identity card to check if Daniel was the same requested young person, whom they’ve only seen on a tablet screen. The police and the military held him in the living room, while others took the rest of the family away in a truck without official markings. The same thing happened with three other young boys who lived on the same street.

Julián remembers that morning: “One of the policemen wanted to see if my son’s face matched the photos he had on a tablet. At first, they confused him with my oldest son, because they are very similar.” The 16-year-old was allegedly executed in the courtyard of the house with a shot, although the death certificate says that he died in a confrontation with the police.

Daniel’s father was never told why his boy was killed. “They had a culebra (conflict) with gangs from other villages, Los Caliches and Barrio Nuevo. I believe the authorities had identified him. They killed him as an example for others. It may have been a revenge or a tip off. And they only came for three, the rest were left loose. If they meant to dismantle a band, why would they only grab three?”

Luis Ángel Carrasquero has a similar idea about the death of his son, Ángel, on March 10, 2017, in El Valle. The procedure, which left nine dead, was part of the third phase of the OLP, which had the novelty of the “H” of “humanist” added to its name. “The police arrived at dawn. They were hooded. But I’m sure I know who the killer was. There was a policeman of the PNB who had threatened my boy. He had already taken him prisoner. And they released him every time because they couldn’t find anything. The last time, my son told me: ‘Dad, the policeman told me that the day he captured me again, I’ll wish I was dead’. And a week later this happened,” he said.

According to the father’s story, Ángel Carrasquero was harassed by an officer of the PNB delegation of El Valle because the young man had an improvised barber shop on Calle 14, and refused to pay the bribe that would have allowed him to continue working on public roads. “My son told the policeman that he was not going to pay him anything because that was money he earned with his work. From that moment on the policeman was upset. Every time he saw Ángel, he threatened and hit him. I know he killed him” says Luis Carrasquero, convinced that he’s right, although officers from the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence
(DGCM) who had their faces covered with skull masks were also present that day.

The data collected on the deaths of Daniel and Ángel Carrasquero at the hands of the OLP fit in the logic of corporate revenge and private practice of violence, according to Verónica Zubillaga, sociologist and researcher of violence. “The weapons are used to settle personal scores and these operations are used by police and government officials as a mechanism of retaliation or revenge against ‘enemies’. They also took advantage of the fact that so many forces participated in the raids and none is held accountable”.

This thesis was confirmed by police officers who admitted that their superiors sometimes sent them to the operations in order to show effectiveness in terms of citizen security. Within the OLP that “effectiveness” was measured in the number of deaths. However, the order did not apply to everyone. There were privileges. The command came with a warning: some criminal groups were not to be touched. “Criminal organizations can not operate without the complicity of the police and above. If the police don’t stop the criminals it’s because they don’t want to. The government does have the capacity to control the gangs. But there are interests” explained a former PNB officer who works in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and asked not to reveal his name for fear of retaliation.

With the launching of the second phase of the OLP, announced by the Government as Operation to Liberate and Protect the People Operation New Phase (OLP-NF), the then vice minister of the Integrated System of Criminal Investigation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Katherine Harrington, invited people to play a role to “contribute without fear, through social intelligence, with information about their communities.” She said that was the way to be precise, to be 100 percent effective. Harrington made the remarks during the program Análisis Situacional, broadcast by Globovisión and conducted by Oscar Shemel, public opinion specialist and director of the polling firm Hinterlaces.

Harrington’s announcement referred to a new mechanism used by the government to identify alleged criminals who would be OLP targets: social intelligence. With this, civilians –residents, members of the colectivos and citizens belonging to the social structures of the governing party (PSUV) within the communities– were made informants of the security forces. This method also ratified the selective nature of the OLPs.

The OLP of June 30 2016 in Ciudad Caribia, an urbanization of Misión Vivienda (the governmen’ts housing program for the poor), did not only use “social intelligence”, but also armed civilians.

Members of the colectivo Pérez Bonalde, based in Catia (2,000 inhabitants), organized a community meeting on June 25, 2016, under the pretext of coordinating the distribution of the food bags sold by the Government (known as CLAP).

After the first announcements about food were received with excitement by the residents, the paramilitary group used a video beam to project the faces of seven men whom they had identified as alleged members of a criminal gang called “Los Sindicalistas”. To the astonishment of the residents of Catia, the visitors claimed that those men sold drugs, robbed and controlled the construction business in the urbanization. Therefore they had to be removed from Ciudad Caribia. The colectivo also promised to avenge the murder of its comrade Omar José Molina Marín, whose body had been found at the entrance of the neighborhood.

Five days later Jordán Pérez Castillo, Ricardo Fabián Cruz Cardona, Joel Pérez, Rodolfo Manrique, Johan Pérez, Anthony López and Julio López –the seven men who had been singled out by the colectivo– were executed by the OLP, according to their families. The operation was conducted by officials of the PNB, SEBIN and members of the colectivo, who broke into several apartments, as witnesses and relatives of the victims said.

Some of the victims worked in the construction of urbanization buildings that had not been finished. “After they killed the men, the colectivos kept their jobs. Now they decide who can work there,” which allows them to assign jobs, trade with construction materials and use the place. The families of some of the victims were evicted from the homes assigned to them by the government. The paramilitaries roam the neighborhood every night.

Three weeks after the OLP in Ciudad Caribia, Luisa Ortega Díaz, at that time Venezuela’s Attorney-General, said in a television interview that she would investigate “the involvement of civilians as active OLP officers.”

The participation of colectivos as agents of “social intelligence” to mark people and lead security forces to the residences of the victims was repeated in the OLP of October 6, 2016 in 23 de Enero, west of Caracas and very close to Palacio Miraflores. “That day the colectivos were with the national police (PNB), telling them where the boys’ houses were,” said Carlos*, a relative of one of the 11 victims of that procedure.

23 de Enero is an area controlled by colectivos, so it was strange to carry out an OLP there. Although Carlos doesn’t know the reason behind the procedure, he believes it could have been related to a territorial dispute over drug sales, the oldest and most common criminal activity of the place. The business is practically monopolized by the colectivos.

“Territorial occupation is used to recover state sovereignty. Authorities feel they are losing sovereignty and seek to reconquer those territories, not to rebuild the social fabric, but to remove an armed group and replace it for another one. This is the case of the colectivos, which subject the population to arbitrary social control, and only benefit their immediate circle,” said researcher Verónica Zubillaga.

The colectivos displace criminal gangs and take control of the areas, not to bring peace, but to keep their illicit trade. It happened in El Valle (southwest of Caracas) where a group called Divino Niño took control of the extortion business in some areas of the village after the OLP-NF. “These groups are here to stay. They are not many yet, but they also went out to shoot at people when they protested these days,” a local resident said in a low voice, and asked not to be identified. The colectivos patrol the area constantly and are alarmed at the presence of strangers.

These paramilitary groups have no access to Cota 905 and El Cementerio, where the OLP has become routine. “There are no colectivos here. The gangs have not allowed it. Nobody wants them around, we’ve never wanted them. What’s more, this whole mess of the Peace Zones and the OLP started because the local gangs killed a man from a colectivo, burned him and forced them to leave,” said Francisco*, while recalling the details of that violent incident of 2014.

Javier’s* brother was the leader of a band of kidnappers in El Valle, southwest of Caracas, but he used to spend time in a house he had built in Valles del Tuy, Miranda state. The house, equipped with all the comforts, also served as a meeting and celebration hub.

“He organized a party once, and invited some neighbors that brought some prepago –a local slang for prostitutes. The women took pictures of everyone. The following week, the PNB arrived. They surrounded the place and although my brother surrendered, they shot him in the chest and killed him. They also killed two neighbors who had been at the party. The police had pictures of that night,” said Javier, and added that a relative had witnessed what had happened.

Javier’s brother was executed in June 2016. Five months earlier, on January 5, the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace, Gustavo González López, told a journalist from Runrun.es, in an informal conversation in the outskirts of the Legislative Palace, that they were using women to locate members of some criminal organizations. He also claimed that many of the leaders of the bands of Cota 905, El Cementerio and El Valle were hiding in Valles del Tuy.

Last year several members of criminal gangs died after being given away by prostitutes who had been hired for parties, Javier said. “Now they don’t invite them to the neighborhood’s electronic parties and no one can take pictures or make videos” the man explained. He admitted that his brother was a criminal, but hates that he was killed after having surrendered

Specialist Verónica Zubillaga also analyzes this situation. “It’s the logic of the rigtheous. They look for people who have been effectively accused of committing crimes. After executing them they identify them by the nickname –or attribute nicknames to them. They dehumanize them, because that way they show how evil they are, and justify the punishment”.

Protecting government and military officials or avenging alleged offenses committed by criminal groups were also part of the reasons that justified the deployment of an OLP. “If an important person had been the victim of a robbery, kidnapping or homicide, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the command of the GNB immediately released the guidelines to carry out the OLP. The spearhead of the OLP was the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, in particular the GNB,” said a former National Police officer who did administrative work at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and asked not to be identified in order to avoid reprisals.

For instance, between January and May 2016, four large OLPs were carried out in the Barlovento area of the state of Miranda. All the procedures were a reaction of the authorities to criminal acts that had specifically affected officers of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB).

The first one took place on January 12, after the murder of two GNB sergeants. The OLP took over Caucagua, municipality of Acevedo, and for 12 hours did not allow its residents to enter or leave. They were looking for the murderers of the GNB men, who had been intercepted while escorting a PDVSA truck. The second OLP was carried out on April 6, to search for the murderers of the retired general Jorge Enrique González Arreaza, and his wife, who were attacked at a gas station in Caucagua. The intervention of the OLP left three alleged criminals dead.

On April 11, an OLP was held after the kidnapping of Army Lieutenant Juan Mujica Ruiz; his wife Julmary Freites –also a lieutenant of CEOFANB–; his two-month-old daughter; and Sergeant José Castillo, who was with them. Four hundred men were mobilized in three municipalities and 12 alleged criminals died in alleged clashes. A resident of the area said the Army was part of the operation and carried .50 caliber machine guns, which are weapons of war: “When I saw that, I said: ‘this is going to be a massacre.’ The soldiers were so young.” On May 14, there was another OLP, when the commander of the Aviation, León José Cedeño Capriles and his wife of Polish origin, who had been kidnapped in Barlovento, were released.

Other OLPs are thought to be retaliations to attacks against the property of Ministers and government officials. “Chinese appliances that were in a warehouse of a PSUV MP were stolen, and some cows were taken. The OLP came to look for the thieves in the houses of the people. No one was killed” said Andrés*, while pointing to the parcel where the robbery was perpetrated, located in the municipality of Acevedo.

An official of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Justice and Peace explained that in Barlovento, the OLP had support of the municipal police, SEBIN, CONAS and CICPC. “The Miranda police didn’t join in because the governor of the state belongs to the opposition, and his regional police was included, they wouldn’t have been able to square the procedures. Polimiranda would not have accepted to participate in acts outside the law and would not comply and accept a false version of what happened.”

Jesús*, lives in the town of Río Chico, Barlovento, where he does social work and is in contact with members of the criminal gangs. He also suspects the existence of irregularities and opaque interests behind the actions of the OLP. “With the Peace Zones thing, the government knew who the gangs were, because José Vicente Rangel Ávalos (then Deputy Minister of Public Safety of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) came and met them and even took pictures with them. So how come they can’t catch the real criminals? Besides, who puts weapons in their hands? How do those boys change the dollars they charge for the kidnappings? If they don’t leave the hills, the OLP is a fraud,” he concluded.

Also in Valles del Tuy, Miranda state, residents of the town of Santa Lucía claimed that some OPLs had been used to “clean up” the area or displace criminal groups, by request of contractors of the state and to serve the interests of people linked to the government. José Vicente Rangel Ávalos was again mentioned. He had frequently visited the place while being Deputy Minister of Peace Affairs, assigned to the Office of the President and the Government Management Follow-up. “People say that when he comes and meets with gang members, a PLO will be deployed soon and they opposing gang will be dismantled” explained a well-known doctor from the region.

“What we see here is a privatization of the forces of public order. Their purposes are to defend the business and interests of the powerful, and not to protect and guarantee the security of citizens in general,” Zubillaga explained.

The OLPs were characterized by the disproportionate and exaggerated participation of the public force. Its logistical deployment, which at first included even state television cameras, hindered justice, intimidated people living in popular areas and was a propaganda tool in the months leading up to the parliamentary elections of December 2015.

Researcher and lawyer Keymer Ávila, who has studied the OLP from its beginnings, explains that in contexts of crisis of legitimacy of the state, governments try to legitimize themselves in different ways: “They usually use the ‘war against crime’ to try to distract attention from structural problems that are more difficult to solve.” In the case of Venezuela, food shortage was already becoming a difficult problem for Maduro’s government in mid-2015 –when the OLP was announced– and its popularity was hit hard.

Transparency Venezuela concluded that the OLP was part of a political strategy and not a plan to reduce insecurity in the country. “This plan does not have a defined direction regarding its strategy and execution. It does not have an accountability system in terms of operations and assigned resources. It is more inclined to immediate, strategic results and impact to give a visible impression that insecurity is decreasing in the country, while acting in an unplanned way that is not adjusted to the rule of law,” says a bulletin of the NGO published in October 2015.

In Mañonguito, Carabobo state, one of the first OLPs was staged. It was a police-military operation recorded and broadcast by the official channel VTV on August 20, 2015. It showed the magnitude of a procedure with a deployment of hundreds of agents, helicopters and motorized brigades to take a neighborhood of easy access and high visibility to the north of Valencia, located between two important roads such as Bolívar Avenue and the East Highway. Three days earlier, 850 officers took part in another OLP.

The OLP in Mañonguito fit within the logic of the spectacle, according to sociologist and researcher Verónica Zubillaga, who concludes: “From this perspective, it was used as an instrument of propaganda during the electoral campaign for the parliamentary elections of 2015, with which the government tried to show that it was committed in the fight against insecurity.”

Elías Jaua, who was president of Corpomiranda and Protector of Miranda, aspired to win a seat in parliament. During the campaign he promoted the OLP operations in Barlovento and Valles de Tuy. He also accompanied President Nicolás Maduro in various television addresses in which both the OLP and the campaign were mentioned. “The government will not allow criminal gangs to dominate a territory or exercise authority over the population,” he said on July 19, 2015, four days after the launching of the OLP.

In addition to participating in televised activities along with President Maduro – many of them broadcast on national television–, the political leaders of the government party and members of the Executive Cabinet used their social media accounts to promote and distribute information about the OLP.

“They even came with helicopters once, over there, over Merecure (a town in the municipality of Acevedo in Barlovento) with an OLP. The gangs had stolen a truck full of cheese and they took them to the hills. Even the boys at school were handed out cheeses. There were lots of police and trucks,” recalled Yulibeth*, who lives in Caucagua (Barlovento) and works near Merecure.

Although the press reports of the last two years didn’t report the theft of this food vehicle, they do record several OLPs of great spectacularity in Barlovento, like the four that were organized during the first five months of 2016. “More than 25 vehicles, 30 motorcycles, four personnel transport vehicles, two tanks and three helicopters were deployed in the area”, during the last of those procedures, as reported by El Pitazo.

The deployment was so disproportionate in some cases that residents of Caucagua reported that the town was taken for more than 12 hours, and neither the entry nor the departure of any of the residents was allowed.

The OLP raid with the largest number of officers

Comparison between the OLP raid with the largest number of officers and the operation that had the least participation of State security forces

Up to 3,000 policemen took part in the operations of May 10, 2016, held in four villages of Caracas (El Cementerio, El Valle, Coche and El Paraíso) during the re-launch of the PLO-NF. No other operation had had more officers, according to the database developed by Runrun.es for this investigation. ■