‘There must be justice’ - Venezuelan bishops denounce death of political prisoner
“Such criminals cannot expect to go unpunished for the harm they have caused.”
Several Venezuelan bishops decried Friday the Venezuelan regime’s admission that a political prisoner died under law enforcement custody in July 2025.
On May 7, the Ministry of Penitentiary Services in Venezuela published a statement saying that political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero Navas died in a military hospital on July 24, 2025 after being arrested in January 2025.
While the government claimed Quero died of respiratory failure after suffering a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, human rights activists and several Venezuelan bishops have cast doubt on the official account, calling for an independent investigation into his death.
In a statement to The Pillar, Archbishop Jesús González de Zárate of Valencia, president of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, called Quero’s death a “regrettable event, which once again highlights the serious deterioration of the Venezuelan justice system and calls on us, once again, to demand the full release of those detained because of their political views or for expressing their opinions on the Venezuelan situation.”
Archbishop Víctor Hugo Basabe of Coro, one of the most vocal episcopal critics of the Venezuelan regime, also spoke up about Quero’s death. In a social media post, he denounced “the repressive organs of Venezuela’s criminal regime.”
Basabe highlighted the “heartbreaking” suffering of Quero’s 82-year-old mother, Carmen Teresa Navas, who has become one of the most visible advocates for the more than 500 political prisoners still held in Venezuelan jails, even after an amnesty law led to the release of hundreds of detainees.
He also questioned the regime’s delay in acknowledging that Quero had died while detained in a Venezuelan prison.
“Why deny a mother the right to mourn and bury her son when she has long been asking to be granted the right to know where he was being held? Why such cruelty toward a poor mother whose only wish was to find her son so she could at least visit him?” he said.
Basabe warned that those responsible for Quero’s death will “have a lot to answer for before God.”
“In Venezuela, for there to be true peace, there must be justice,” he continued. “Such criminals cannot expect to go unpunished for the harm they have caused.”
Quero, a businessman who had served briefly in the military, was arrested by the DGCIM, one of Venezuela’s secret police agencies, in Caracas on Jan. 1, 2025. He was charged with treason, conspiracy, and terrorism.
Quero had no contact with family members or legal counsel after his arrest, and no information was provided about him, including the location where he was being held. The government later said that when he was arrested, he provided no information about family, and no family members requested a prison visit.
However his mother, Carmen Navas, became a symbol among the families of Venezuelan political prisoners, traveling to various prisons across Caracas and demanding information from Venezuelan authorities about her son’s whereabouts.
Quero is the 15th political prisoner to die in law enforcement custody in Venezuela since 2020.
According to the Venezuelan government’s statement, Quero was hospitalized in the Military Hospital of Caracas on July 15, 2025 due to gastrointestinal bleeding and a fever, and died nine days later due to respiratory failure.
Several Venezuelan political prisoners who were released following a January 2026 amnesty law told Navas that Quero had been at the El Rodeo I prison and had become very sick the previous summer with a stomach disease after he was fed only beans for months.
The Venezuelan Church had become generally more timid in its denunciation of the Maduro regime after a 2024 crackdown on dissent, which followed a presidential election held that year in which Maduro won under suspicions of fraud.
However, since Maduro’s capture by the United States on Jan. 3, the Venezuelan bishops have regained their voice in criticizing the regime.
On Jan. 14, Archbishop Polito Rodríguez of Barquisimeto delivered a homily calling for change in the country.
“Regrettably, for decades, corruption has become part of our culture. We’ve gotten used to it in our families, in our institutions, in our homes, in the economy, in politics, which has resulted in an ethical and moral decomposition that affects all,” he said.
“We pray for all the [political] prisoners, for their families. We applaud that some of them have been freed, but many more are missing, whose cries can no longer be ignored. Therefore, their prompt release shall be a gesture of reconciliation and justice,” he said.
In February, the two Venezuelan cardinals, Cardinal Baltazar Porras and Cardinal Diego Padrón, published a letter encouraging the local Catholic Church to work for the release of all political prisoners, an end to repression of free speech, and respect for the results of Venezuela’s disputed 2024 presidential election.
Also in February, the Venezuelan bishops’ conference released a letter criticizing the presence of foreign actors in the country under the Chávez and Maduro regimes.
The bishops said in their letter that “it is necessary to rebuild democratic institutions; restore the independence of public authorities; establish a credible Supreme Court of Justice and National Electoral Council that guarantee free and fair elections; ensure the state’s territorial control of the country.”
They quoted Pope Leo’s Jan. 4 Angelus address calling for the good of the Venezuelan people to prevail “over any other consideration,” and saying that “the life of the Venezuelan people has been marked in the past years by generalized poverty… generalized and unpunished corruption, violations of human rights, including freedom of speech, and the right to due process and [legal] defense.”