Venezuela's Ministry for Prison Services acknowledged on Thursday the death of political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, a 51-year-old merchant, nearly ten months after he died and more than a year after his family began filing forced disappearance complaints. The belated admission has drawn sharp condemnation from human rights organisations and raised serious questions about accountability within the Venezuelan prison system.

According to the official account, Quero Navas was detained on 3 January 2025 by officers of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) in a Caracas square. He was held at the Rodeo I Judicial Internment Center near the capital before being transferred on 15 July to the Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital, where he died on 24 July of acute respiratory failure caused by pulmonary thromboembolism. Authorities say he was buried on 30 July at the Jardín La Puerta Memorial Park — yet an AFP reporter at the cemetery observed that the date inscribed on the grave reads 27 July, three days earlier than the officially stated date of death. The burial site itself consists of little more than a handful of stones and a rusted metal plaque bearing his name alongside that of a woman.

Prison authorities justified the failure to notify the family by claiming Quero had not provided information on next of kin and that no relative had requested a formal visit. Rights organisations firmly rejected this explanation. His mother, 82-year-old Carmen Teresa Navas, had spent months travelling between prisons, courts and government offices, submitting multiple petitions to the prosecutor's office and the Ombudsman's Office. Days before the official confirmation, she held a press conference alongside the human rights group Foro Penal publicly asking where her son was. On Thursday, authorities escorted her to the cemetery, where she laid flowers and immediately called for a DNA test to confirm whether the remains are truly those of her son. The Venezuelan Public Prosecutor's Office announced the opening of a criminal investigation and ordered the immediate exhumation of the body.

The case has a broader legal dimension. On 18 April 2026, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures for Quero and his mother, warning of a risk of irreparable harm — a resolution the Venezuelan state never responded to, even though the prisoner had already been dead for months. Foro Penal's deputy director Gonzalo Himiob said Quero's detention stemmed from military service performed in 2023, leading to charges of treason, conspiracy and terrorism; a court ruled those charges fell outside the scope of an amnesty law promoted in February by interim President Delcy Rodríguez. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, described the case as