The only reprieve prisoners received from the blinding and sterile white light that illuminates the torture chamber was the occasional flicker of electricity.
These lapses in power in the so-called ‘White Rooms’ are only temporary, caused by the brutal electrocution of another prisoner next door.
But the mental and physical scars of inmates at Venezuela’s El Helicoide prison, described by those who were kept there as ‘hell on earth’, will remain for the rest of their lives.
The closure of the prison, a former mall, was cited as one of the reasons Donald Trump launched the unprecedented incursion into Venezuela to kidnap leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
Trump, speaking after the operation took place, described it as a ‘torture chamber’.
For many Venezuelans, El Helicoide is the physical representation of the decades of repression they have felt under successive governments.
But with Maduro’s ouster and replacement with his vice president Delcy Rodriguez, things may be soon change in the South American nation.
Trump said last night that he had a ‘very good call’ with Rodriguez, describing her as a ‘terrific person’, adding: ‘We are making tremendous progress, as we help Venezuela stabilise and recover’.
He added: ‘This partnership between the United States of America and Venezuela will be a spectacular one FOR ALL. Venezuela will soon be great and prosperous again, perhaps more so than ever before’.
For her part, Rodriguez has made concessions to the US with regard to its treatment of political prisoners since taking office earlier this month. She has so far released hundreds of prisoners in multiple tranches, following talks with American officials.
Since then, former prisoners at El Helicoide spoke of the abject horror they went through. Many have said they were raped by guards with rifles, while others were electrocuted.
For many Venezuelans, El Helicoide (pictured) is the physical representation of the decades of repression they have felt under successive governments
El Helicoide is infamous for having ‘White Rooms’ – windowless rooms that are perpetually lit to subject prisoners to long-term sleep deprivation
SEBIN officials outside Helicoide prison during riots in 2018
Rosmit Mantilla, an opposition politician who was held in El Helicoide for two years, told the Telegraph: ‘Some of them lost sight in their right eye because they had an electrode placed in their eye.
‘Almost all were hung up like dead fish whilst they tortured them,’ he said.
‘Every morning, we would wake up and see prisoners lying on the floor who had been taken away at night and brought back tortured, some unconscious, covered in blood or half dead.’
Mr. Mantilla, along with 22 others, was kept in a tiny 16ft by 9ft cell known as ‘El Infiernito’- Little Hell’, so called because ‘there is no natural ventilation, you are in bright light all day and night, which disorients you’, he said.
‘We urinated in the same place where we kept our food because there was no space. We couldn’t even lie down on the floor because there wasn’t enough room’.
Guards at El Helicoide could never claim they knew nothing of the horror prisoners went through.
Fernández, an activist who spent two-and-a-half years locked up in the prison after leading protests against the government, told the FT that he was greeted by an officer at the prison who rubbed his hands together and gleefully said: ‘Welcome to hell’.
The activist told the newspaper that he saw guards electrocute prisoners’ genitals and suffocate them with plastic bags filed with tear gas.
A man holds a sign and a candle during a vigil at El Helicoide in Caracas, Venezuela, January 13 2026
Security forces are seen at the entrance of El Helicoide, the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), in Caracas, on May 17, 2018
Security forces arrive at the El Helicoide -a facility and prison owned by the Venezuelan government and used for both regular and political prisoners of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN)- in Caracas on January 8, 2026.
He was himself suspended from a metal grate for weeks, he said: ‘I was left hanging there for a month, without rights, without the possibility of using the bathroom, without the possibility of washing myself, without the possibility of being properly fed’.
To this day, the now-US-based Fernández still hears the screams of his fellow inmates: ‘The sound of the guards’ keys still torments me, because every time the keys jingled it meant an officer was coming to take someone out of a cell’.
Built in the heart of Venezuela’s capital, it was designed to be a major entertainment complex.
The architects in charge of designing El Helicoide drew up plans to include 300 boutique shops, eight cinemas, a five-star hotel, a heliport and a show palace.
It was also set to have a 2.5mile-long ramp spiralling from the bottom to the top of the structure, which would have allowed vehicles to go up and park inside.
But construction began amid the overthrow of Venezuela’s then-dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, infamous for overseeing one of the most violently oppressive governments in the country’s history.
Revolutionaries accused the complex’s developers of being funded by Jiménez’s government, and the incoming administration refused to allow further construction to take place.
For years, the complex sat abandoned, save for the squatters who moved into the dilapidated building, until the government acquired it in 1975.
An officer stands guard at the entrance to El Helicoide -a facility and prison owned by the Venezuelan government and used for both regular and political prisoners of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN)- in Caracas on January 9, 2026
The entrance of the El Helicoide -a facility and prison owned by the Venezuelan government and used for both regular and political prisoners of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN)- is pictured in Caracas on January 9, 2026
A group of people hold a vigil at El Helicoide in Caracas, Venezuela, January 13 2026
Over the course of decades, more and more shadowy intelligence agencies moved into the building. But it was in 2010 that it was slowly converted into a makeshift prison for SEBIN, Venezuela’s secret police unit, where officers took part in systematic torture and human rights violations.
Alex Neve, a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on Venezuela, said: ‘The very mention of El Helicoide gives rise to a sense of fear and terror.
‘Many corners of the complex became dedicated places of cruel punishment and indescribable suffering, and prisoners have even been held in stairwells in the complex, where they are forced to sleep on the stairs.’
The UN said this week that they believe around 800 political prisoners are still being held by Venezuela.
Whether they get released soon under Rodriguez’s regime remains to be seen.
