Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News 

Video Credit: CEN/OscarPerezGV

A jailed friend of the Venezuelan rebel pilot who stole a helicopter to attack government buildings has claimed he is being tortured by the prison authorities.

According to local media, Alonso Jose Mora Alfonso is being kept locked up at Ramo Verde Prison in the northern Venezuelan state of Miranda because he was friends with rebel pilot Oscar Perez.

Perez was a police pilot who protested against President Nicolas Maduro’s government by stealing a helicopter before attacking government buildings and stealing weapons from a military base.

In January 2018, the government announced that Perez had been killed along with six other members of a “terrorist cell”.

A relative of Mora Alfonso told local media that Perez’s former friend has been suffering torture at the hands of the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).

The unnamed relative said: “He told us that they place a plastic bag filled with something smelly like insecticide that they use to suffocate him while hitting him in the ribs and body.

Video Credit: CEN/@oscarperezgv

“They throw water on him and leave him lying on the ground until he was moved by one of his friends who had also been arrested during the raids.”

Mora Alfonso’s family member claimed he was taken to a different prison with a group of prisoners where “the torture was even more brutal”.

They said: “He was tied naked to a bathroom pipe and beaten. He was given electric shocks all over his body.”

The alleged victim’s relative also claimed that the authorities sometimes give him vinegar instead of water and that they once showed him a video of a dog being beheaded before threatening that they would do the same to his friends and family.

Six days after his arrest, Mora Alfonso was presented to the Military Court of Control but was not allowed to see his family until 60 days later.

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