Washington D.C. – NY Times, March 18, 2025
They were American tourists hoping for a good time, they said. Then they became captives of an autocratic government.
The guards wore name tags that read “Hitler” and “Demon” and covered their faces with ski masks. The Americans in the Venezuelan prison were confined to cement cells, beaten, pepper-sprayed and subjected to what one prisoner called “psychological torture.”
Three months into their capture, the Americans were so filled with anger that they rebelled. They banged cell walls and kicked doors, they said, as other prisoners joined in, hundreds of them screaming for freedom until the concrete began to crack.
“Are you with me, my Venezuelans?” one of the prisoners, Gregory David Werber, yelled, a fellow inmate recalled.
“We are with you, gringo!” they yelled back.
Six American prisoners came home from Venezuela in late January, their freedom secured after an unusual and highly public visit by a Trump administration official to Caracas, the capital. Critics said the meeting between Richard Grenell, a special envoy, and Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocrat, gave legitimacy to a leader accused of widespread human rights abuses and stealing a recent election.
