Published at: 08/01/2025 09:00 PM

(LATEST NEWS, Tuesday, January 4, 1994)

• On January 3, 1994, more than 100 inmates lost their lives, as a result of arson and the shooting of security officers when they broke in to suppress the protest of those deprived of their liberty, who were demanding improvements in living conditions inside the prison of Sabaneta, edo. Zulia.
• The hospitals of that regional entity, especially the University of Zulia, collapsed amid the number of bodies, gunshot wounded, burned, suffocated and drowned.
• The final reports, about the so-called “New Year's Massacre”, determined that security forces entered the prison compound carrying out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary killings and serious injuries. The death toll rose to 150.
• The situation of violence caused when National Guard officers entered the prison compound was never investigated.
• While the families of those deprived of their liberty were demanding information about the victims, the prison authorities, alleging the lack of cold rooms, buried dozens of bodies in mass graves in the Maracaibo cemetery.
• This prevented the carrying out of forensic medical experiments, the identification of those killed and the determination of the true causes of the deaths that occurred there.
• In the midst of the riot, a fire broke out in pavilions 1, 2 and 3, which led to police intervention, leaving dozens dead due to asphyxiation.
• What happened in the Zulia National Prison (Sabaneta), left a shadow of impunity that sought to hide the dozens of Extralegal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, perpetrated by police officers, who were never brought before the courts of law.
• This occurred during the interim administration of Ramón J. Velásquez, while Ramón Escobar Salóm was Attorney General of the Republic, judiciary obscured by this and other criminal acts such as the drug pardon of Larry Tovar Acuña and the bank embezzlement that same year, which allowed the owners of the country's main banks to flee, with more than 6 billion U$D, granted by FOGADE in financial aid.

Mazo News Team