Venezuela's intelligence agencies are committing crimes against humanity as part of a plan orchestrated at the highest level of government to repress dissent, UN experts said Tuesday.
A team tasked with probing alleged violations in Venezuela said it had uncovered how members of intelligence services implemented orders by President Nicolas Maduro and others in a scheme to stifle opposition.
"In doing so, grave crimes and human rights violations are being committed, including acts of torture and sexual violence," Marta Valinas, chair of the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, said in a statement.
The mission, which was created by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019, already warned in its first report two years ago that Maduro and top government ministers were behind likely crimes against humanity.
And the situation has not improved since then, according to the mission, which will face a council vote in early October on whether it can continue its work.
"Venezuela is still facing a profound human rights crisis," Valins said.
- Maduro 'selecting targets' -
In its latest report, the mission members delved into the chains of command, and how intelligence services were instrumentalised to quash opposing voices.
"President Nicolas Maduro, supported by other high-level authorities, stand out as the main architects in the design, implementation and maintenance of a machinery with the purpose of repressing dissent," the report said.
It pointed to how Maduro himself and others in his inner circle were in some cases involved in "selecting targets" for detention by intelligence agents, including political opponents.
The mission -- which has never been granted access to Venezuela -- based its findings on nearly 250 confidential interviews, as well as analysis of legal documents.
It said it had documented 122 cases of victims who were subjected to torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" by agents with the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).
"Torture was carried out in its Boleita headquarters in Caracas and in a network of covert detention centres across the country, it said.
- Sexual violence as torture -
The mission said it had also investigated at least 51 cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) since 2014.
These cases included "opposition politicians, journalists, protesters, and human rights defenders," it said, adding that most of the abuse had taken place in the El Helicoide detention centre in Caracas.
Former SEBIN employees had told the investigators that in some cases, "torture was ordered directly by President Maduro," the report said, listing torture methods including electric shocks, asphyxiation and stress positions.
"Both SEBIN and DGCIM made extensive use of sexual and gender-based violence to torture and humiliate its detainees," the mission said.
The experts lamented that Venezuelan authorities had failed to hold perpetrators of abuses accountable.
"The human rights violations by state intelligence agencies, orchestrated at the highest political levels, have taken place in a climate of almost complete impunity," mission member Francisco Cox said in the statement.
- 'Deeply troubling' -
In a separate report Tuesday, the mission also focused on rights abuses against local populations in gold mining areas of Venezuela's southern Bolvar state.
"Both state and non-state actors have committed human rights violations and crimes against the local population in the struggle for control over mining areas," it said, pointing to killings, disappearances, extortion and sexual violence.
The experts lamented that the authorities had not only failed to prevent and investigate such abuses, but appeared to have actively colluded with non-state actors in parts of the region.
Mission member Patricia Tappata Valdez described the situation in Bolivar as "deeply troubling."
"Local populations, including indigenous peoples, are caught in the violent battle between state and armed criminal groups for the control of gold."