Caracas.- Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize nominee María Corina Machado lamented this Thursday the death of Venezuelan-Uruguayan political prisoner José Breijo, a septuagenarian who was under house arrest in Caracas, and held the government responsible for his passing.
“Another victim of the infinite cruelty of this regime. Today we deeply mourn the death of José ‘Pepe’ Breijo, a 71-year-old Uruguayan-Venezuelan citizen, who passed away after suffering the horror of kidnapping and injustice,” said Machado in a message on X.
Earlier, the Human Rights Committee of her party Vente Venezuela (VV) published a statement on X in which it noted that the responsibility for Breijo’s death “falls fully on the regime, which arbitrarily deprived him of his liberty in 2023 under the absurd and unfounded accusation of ‘terrorism’.”
Breijo’s arrest
The organization also denounced that Breijo remained detained for more than two years at the Tocuyito Penitentiary Center, where he suffered from “severe malnutrition, losing more than 50 kilos of weight, and an irreversible deterioration of his health, especially of his respiratory system.”
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The committee recalled that, last May, when he returned to his home in the capital after being granted house arrest, Breijo “discovered that one of his own captors, an official from the GOES (Strategic Operations Group), had invaded and ransacked his apartment.”
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“All these arbitrary acts progressively destroyed the life of José Breijo and led him to a death that could and should have been avoided,” stated the committee, which demanded an independent investigation.
The invasion of your home
On May 27th, Breijo, who was detained after taking a photograph of a flag with Arabic inscriptions, managed to recover his home but without any furniture.
Breijo then told EFE that at midnight that day a man arrived at his building while he was sleeping in the common hallway to hand him the keys to his apartment.
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In the home, there was only a table, a piece of furniture, and a refrigerator, all belonging to the police officer who invaded their home, as well as a bed donated by their neighbors.
On May 28, he was transferred to a health center to treat various ailments, as reported at the time by the Ombudsman’s Office. That same month, the Government reported the death, which occurred in July 2025, of political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, after 16 months of reports regarding his disappearance by his mother, Carmen Navas, who passed away on May 17 of this year.
