Caracas Chronicles

Name: Miguel Alejandro Urbina Hernández
Year of birth: 2007
Arrest date: August 2, 2024
Area: Catia, Caracas
Profession and job: Student, 3rd year of high school

Miguel Urbina Hernández is 16 years old. Police arrested him on August 2 around 8:00 a.m. Neighbors told Miguel’s mother what the arrest was like: “It happened while he was eating a barbecue. The neighbors told me that they were taking him away, so I ran, but I didn’t reach the police.” She went to the command of the Bolivarian National Police, who informed her that her son was being accused of participating in the protests in the Ruperto Lugo sector. “I tell you that it is impossible, I know because my son has been sick since July 28.”

Once in police station Zona 7 of Boleíta, Miguel’s mother could confirm that her son was there and obtained permission to see him and bring him food. He was crying a lot. After that visit, she was not allowed to see her son again until Sunday, August 4.

“The old prisoners in Zone 7 did not allow Miguel to be beaten, but in the first two police stations (he was first in Catia and then in Maripérez) in which he was, he told me that they gave him a metal piece with electricity running through it. “He didn’t want to grab the metal piece, that’s why they hit him.” Miguel’s mother recounts those episodes with sadness, tears come to her eyes and she immediately recovers. “I want to see him free, with me.”

After that, she says they forced Miguel to make a video saying that they were paying him to protest the electoral fraud. He did not record it and they threatened to put his head in a bag with pepper spray. 

Miguel was in Zone 7 from August 2 to 6 when he was transferred, after a collective telematic hearing, to the Coche Detention Center. Only 15 of the 21 detainees, all teenagers, had the hearing.

“Days went by and we were worried because they were not taken to court.”, explains Miguel’s mother. That is when they were transferred to the House of Justice in El Cementerio, Ciudad Caracas, where there is still no response about his legal procedure. “We need our children with us, they are not criminals or terrorists as they want to blame them, their human rights have all been violated. They have told us that terrorism has a charge of 10 years in prison, they deserve to be free.” 

After his arrest, Miguel heard for the first time that his terrorism charge involved strategic material: “Mom, I didn’t know that eating a barbecue was strategic material. Get me out, Mom, I never want to be in prison again. This is horrible.”