Caracas Chronicles

Name: Kennedy Tejeda
Year of birth: 2000
Date of detention: August 2, 2024
Area: Montalbán, Carabobo
Profession: lawyer, part of the legal team of NGO Foro Penal, human rights advocate. 

In the morning of August 2nd, Kennedy Tejeda—from NGO Foro Penal—went to the detention center Comando Rural of GNB, in Montalbán, Carabobo state, to assist the people detained during the protests after the presidential election, pro bono. That night, his family got a call from one of his colleagues. “No official institution notified me of the detention, it was his friends in Foro Penal who raised the alarm after having no news from him for hours,” says a relative on the phone. “In the night, they called me to say that Kennedy was probably detained.”

Tejeda was taken and there was no information on his whereabouts during 20 hours before his family and friends learned he had been transferred to the headquarters of DGCIM, the military counter intelligence agency, in Valencia, where he was kept incommunicado for one more day. On August 3rd, a relative managed to bring him some food, but was unable to see him and check whether he was fine. 

The first thing Tejeda asked for once he could see a relative: books.

Tejeda graduated at the university just nine months ago, but he was already volunteering at Foro Penal. During his academic training he became interested in human rights and became an advocate for the right to defense and the political prisoners in Venezuela. But Tejeda, as most people detained after the elections, has been deprived of his right to choose his defense and get informed about his case.

One relative has the permit to visit him every two weeks, and this person needs an hour to reach CORE (Comando Regional) 2 of security corps CONAS, where a civilian court indicted him with the charges of terrorism and hate speech: “Besides the time we need to visit him, we have to provide him with drinking water, food and clothes. There have been many faults during the process, and the only thing I can say is that, despite his arbitrary detention—or kidnapping—, he has not been mistreated.” The first thing Tejeda asked for once he could see a relative: books.