Ivan Colmenares Garcia, a Colombian lawyer, faced a harrowing ordeal when he tried to enter Venezuela, despite having all the necessary documentation. He was forcibly stripped, tied up, blindfolded, and imprisoned.

For an entire year, the 35-year-old endured severe humiliation and torture, including sleep deprivation. He was kept in a freezing basement and later transferred to an overcrowded prison cell plagued by a flooding toilet.

Colmenares Garcia’s experience, though brutal, pales in comparison to others who have suffered even more inhumane acts, such as having their fingernails removed or their hands submerged in boiling water during torture sessions.

Currently, among those still detained are two brothers of Tomas Guanipa, an opposition politician. Despite the risks, Guanipa remains in Caracas and boldly displayed a T-shirt in the Venezuelan Congress on Monday, demanding the release of over 700 political prisoners.

There was a glimmer of hope for these prisoners’ release after the unexpected capture of dictator Nicolas Maduro on Saturday. However, Donald Trump has yet to address their plight.

Today, Mr. Garcia shares the grim realities of Venezuela’s prisons, while Congressman Guanipa, speaking from Venezuela, urges the U.S. president to advocate for the prisoners’ freedom.

‘They are just regular people,’ says Mr Garcia, urging the US President to ‘have mercy’. 

‘They are parents, they are fathers, they are mothers, they are sons. But they can recover their freedom.’

Ivan Colmenares Garcia, 35, (pictured) was forcibly stripped, bound, blindfolded and jailed under Nicolas Madura’s brutal regime 

Former President of Venezuela, Nicolas Madura (pictured) has been captured by US forces and flown to New York where he faces drugs charges 

Mr Gaunipa agrees. ‘We are really hopeful right now, but political prisoners should be the main issue,’ he says. 

‘Beyond economic interests, if any country wants to help Venezuela they must have the prisoners as the main point of concern.’

While exiled opposition leader Maria Corina Machado yesterday vowed ‘to go back to Venezuela as soon as possible’, there are increasing fears that the autocratic regime will remain.

Ms Machado has called for a transition that would see her swept to power but it has emerged that the CIA believes Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, would be a better ruler to maintain stability.

The Wall Street Journal claims people familiar with the briefing advised against inserting Ms Machado as leader, as it could lead to a security crisis with armed military factions revolting.

It is deeply concerning news for families of political prisoners languishing in Venezuela’s notorious jails.

Mr Garcia will never forget the day Maduro’s goons detained him as he crossed the border near his home in Arauca, Colombia. 

After being held for six hours in a side room, a black truck full of armed men pulled up. They took his phone and bundled him to an interrogation room.

Mr Garcia told the Daily Mail the full horrors of the regime’s jails, which included being tortured with sleep deprivation, kept in a freezing basement and held in a crowded prison

He told of the moment he was ‘so scared’

He was made to lie on the ground surrounded by armed men who swore at him and asked him for his ‘alias’.

At 10am he was stripped and photographed before he was dressed, blindfolded and loaded on to a bus. Disoriented, he could hear the armed guards laughing as they took pot shots at deer outside.

‘I was so scared,’ he said. ‘That ride lasted for eight hours, I thought I was going to die.’

Once in Caracas, they stole his watch and jewellery, and forced him to undress once more for photographs.

‘Then they took me to a place they called the fish bowl,’ he said. ‘It was in the basement, there were six air-conditioning units set up – it was literally freezing. Ice-cold. 

‘I was shivering all over, my whole body shaking. I was made to stay there for a month. The first 15 days, no shower. Just dry arepas [flat bread] to eat.’

When finally allowed to wash, he was once more stripped and ordered to wait outside in a queue of naked inmates. ‘The water was like ice,’ he recalls.

‘There were 100 of us in the fish bowl. We had to sleep two or three to a mattress.

Maduro, 63, pictured in 2021, is currently facing narco-terrorism charges alongside his wife in America, which they have both pleaded not guilty to

‘The lights were on 24/7. Never a moment of dark. We were woken at 5am and had to spend the whole day sat on a chair until 9pm. No talking.’

It was filled with Europeans, Americans and South Americans.

‘There was a Swiss guy who had a beauty business, a Spanish guy coming as a tourist,’ he said. ‘We were just a piece of spare change for them – picked at random in case we became useful.’

After one month, he was taken to a maximum security jail where he was branded one of Venezuela’s most wanted new inmates.

‘We had our faces covered, I thought I was going to be freed,’ he said. But when his mask was removed, he was surrounded by armed men. ‘They had balaclavas. All you could see were their eyes. The main guy said he was called ‘Shark’.’

They were led down, faces covered, into the prison – two to each cell. ‘My cellmate, a European in his 50s, he was my support,’ Mr Garcia said. He adds quietly: ‘He’s still there now.’ 

They were banned from talking and had to wait until the guards were not looking to whisper to one another. They were allowed outside into a tiny yard once every two weeks.

In the cell was a hole in the ground for a toilet which frequently overflowed from the waste of 600 inmates.

‘We had to clean it up,’ he said. ‘It was horrible, everything was horrible. I learnt that in prison there are no good days. Only bad days and worse days.’

It was only after seven months, when he was granted a phone call, that his family learnt what had happened to him. He got five minutes with his mother.

Then, last November, he was blindfolded once more and put on a bus. When it was removed he found he was on the bridge to Colombia. ‘I have no idea why I was released,’ he said. ‘I was just a piece in a game.’

While Mr Garcia said he has ‘a shield inside’ after his ordeal, his voice only shakes when he thinks of his fellow inmates.

‘I left great friends in jail,’ he says. ‘My brothers.

‘The only hope we had in there was that there might be some international intervention.

‘But now the most extraordinary intervention has happened – yet they did nothing for them. I believe this is the only way my brothers will be released – it is in Trump’s hands.’

Natasha Duque, director of Operacion Libertad Internacional, which supports families of Colombian prisoners, said Mr Garcia’s story is all too familiar.

‘We are currently helping 18 such families,’ she said. ‘Those who were released say they were tortured. One was forced to take a lie detector and his hands put into boiling water.

‘They stabbed his skin, he still has the scars. Another, they removed his nails. They have a strategy of detaining foreigners to build an idea of spies infiltrating the country,’ she says.

Congressman Guanipa knows why his brothers were taken. His older brother, Juan Pablo, is the third most powerful member of the opposition, behind Ms Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez.

‘He has been in solitary confinement for seven months,’ Mr Guanipa said. ‘We cannot see him, we cannot get any information as to where he is or his condition.’

His other brother, Pedro, was held for seven months in the notorious El Helicoide jail where prisoners report being beaten, given electric shocks, held in stress positions and humiliated with faeces.

Pedro has been on house arrest for four months, but cannot be contacted. They are both face charges that carry up to 40 years.

Congressman Guanipa, who returned from six years of exile, said: ‘Of course I am afraid. But I have the opportunity to help my country. I have no regrets.

‘The aim is the freedom of the prisoners and the freedom of our country. It is up to the Venezuelan people to achieve this ourselves – this is our moment.’