Venezuelan Soldiers Accused of Rights Abuses Following Guerrilla Attack

Soldiers arrested and tortured more than a dozen residents of the isolated jungle region near the Venezuela-Colombia border following a guerrilla attack that killed eight marines, a human rights group claimed Friday.

The soldiers apparently were trying to extract information about the guerrillas from the villagers, said David Wunsch, director of the Program to Rehabilitate the Victims of Torture, which is based in Caracas.

Soldiers pulled out the teeth of a 22-year-old man “with pliers,” and that man now is missing and presumed dead, he said. A pregnant woman, age 20, had a miscarriage after being forced to sit for six hours under the hot sun and endure other abuses, Wunsch said.

“There’s no doubt they were tortured,” Wunsch said in a telephone interview.

The report said the arrests were carried out by comrades of the Venezuelan marines killed in the Feb. 26 attack at the Cararabo outpost, near the Meta River border with Colombia, 280 miles southwest of Caracas.