Days after Maduro’s ouster, PNB veteran Edison Torres died with signs of physical trauma missing from his death certificate. Authorities chose not to probe anything
This is the second installment of a series by Luis Carlos Díaz covering cases of torture, neglect, and cruel treatment against political prisoners, based on the latest report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission. Originally published in Runrunes.
Edison José Torres Fernández, who was 52 years at the time of his death, was neither an activist nor a political leader. He had served as an officer with the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) in Portuguesa state for 24 years before being arrested on December 11, 2025, for allegedly sharing messages critical of the government.
He was held at the Boleíta Detainee Control and Custody Center in Caracas—better known as “Zona 7”—a PNB facility marked by repeated allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, where many detainees have spent weeks and months cut off from the outside world while authorities denied their whereabouts to their families.
Torres suffered from hypertension, a condition he managed with medication. According to information gathered by the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), his family was never permitted to visit him during his detention, and relatives were unable to confirm whether the medicine they brought to the center was ever delivered to him. On January 8, 2026, his health began to deteriorate—though other reports suggest his condition was failing much earlier. He was transferred to the Domingo Luciani Hospital, where he died two days later, on January 10, 2026. This happened just a week after the capture of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, and two days after the National Assembly announced the imminent release of political prisoners—a promise that, nine months later, remains unfulfilled.
Under the ongoing tenure of Prisons Minister García Zerpa, the Mission documented over 30 cases featuring acts of torture and cruel treatment between September 2024 and August 2025.
The official death certificate cites a cerebrovascular event followed by cardiac arrest. However, the Mission received information indicating that Torres’ body showed severe bruising on his head, arms, and torso, as well as bleeding from his ears—a forensic sign typically associated with cranial trauma, not a spontaneous vascular event. None of this appeared in the official report. And as far as the Mission could verify, authorities never opened a formal investigation into his death.
This case forces a discussion on something previously mentioned in this series: how international law attributes legal responsibility when a crime like this occurs, and the role played—or avoided—by the institutions tasked with investigating it.
The legal principle is straightforward, even if its implications are complex: a State is answerable for the actions of any of its branches—executive, legislative, or judicial—and any public authority, regardless of rank or hierarchy. Furthermore, a specific principle directly applies to both Torres’s case and that of Alfredo Díaz from the previous article: when a State fails to investigate or bring perpetrators of violations to justice, that silence is far from a mere administrative oversight swept under the rug. The failure to investigate is itself a direct breach of the country’s international obligations, carrying clear legal consequences.
For this reason, the Fact-Finding Mission does not remain at the abstract level of discussing “the State.” In its reports, it names specific individuals within the chain of command. It singles out, for instance, Julio José García Zerpa, Minister for the Penitentiary System, as the top official responsible for guaranteeing medical care and regular health checkups for prisoners. That is precisely the duty that, according to the report, was breached in the cases of both Díaz and Torres. The Mission documented that under Zerpa’s tenure, which is still ongoing, acts of torture and cruel treatment were recorded in over 30 cases between September 2024 and August 2025, including the deliberate holding of individuals in incommunicado detention for political reasons.
“The FFM documented a systematic and deliberate failure to effectively respond to serious violations and to act ex officio.”
Responsibility, however, does not stop at the gates of detention centers. From page 88 onward, the report devotes an entire section to mapping what every institutional counterweight did or failed to do. The findings make for uncomfortable reading:
- The Prosecutor General’s Office (Ministerio Público): Through its actions and omissions, it allowed or failed to prevent violations. When investigations were opened, they deliberately shielded higher levels of command.
- The Courts: Operating in their role of judicial oversight, judges failed to act when confronted with illegal detentions, torture, and fabricated evidence documented line-by-line by the Mission.
- The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ): Tasked with reviewing proceedings against high-ranking officials, the TSJ failed to conduct effective investigations into higher-ups. This year, much of its bench was replaced through a process that civil society organizations condemned as lacking transparency.
- The Ombudsperson’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo): The body constitutionally mandated to protect citizens against state abuse was characterized in terms worth quoting directly for their harshness: “The FFM documented a systematic and deliberate failure to effectively respond to serious violations and to act ex officio.”
Read in this context, the case of Edison Torres ceases to be an isolated tragedy and becomes a textbook example of how the entire system continues to operate. A man dies under state custody showing physical signs that contradict the official narrative, and not one institution responsible for investigating—neither the prosecutors, nor the courts, nor the Ombudsperson—initiates a process. Not for a lack of laws or legal frameworks on paper, which Venezuela possesses, but because, as this report documents, those sworn to enforce them made a sustained, deliberate choice not to do so.
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