More than 700 people arrested during protests that erupted after Venezuela’s disputed presidential election have been transferred to maximum-security prisons, a human rights group said Saturday.
The detainees, who were being held in police stations across the country, were transferred last week to two notorious prisons that were previously under the control of gangs, the Venezuela Prison Observatory reported.
The group said that in many cases the transfers were carried out under suspicious circumstances, and that detainees’ relatives were not informed of the transfers to Tokuyito and Tokoron prisons.
“Several irregularities were committed,” the NGO said in a press release.
More than 2,400 people were arrested in protests that began after President Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of a disputed election on July 28.
The opposition claims it has won with a landslide victory and has voting records to prove it.
The leftist Maduro government has resisted intense international pressure to release vote tallies to support its claim of victory, rejecting accusations of authoritarianism.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize Maduro as the winner without seeing detailed voting results.
27 people were killed and 192 were injured in the violence during the protests.
The Venezuela Prison Observatory said none of the people transferred to maximum-security facilities have been allowed to contact their families or lawyers.
Of the 2,400 detainees, 1,581 are listed as political prisoners by another advocacy group called Penal Forum.
It said there are a total of 114 juveniles and 18 of them were released on bail on Saturday, taking the number of youths released from custody to 34.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said this week that some of those arrested were as young as 13 and were being sent to jail alongside older, ordinary criminals.
“What they have done is brutal,” he said of the Maduro government.
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