Shadows of a Failed Coup: The Unrelenting Agony of a Venezuelan Family After Operation Gideon
On January 30, just weeks after Nicolás Maduro’s arrest sent shockwaves through Venezuela, Juvenal José Secaya Torres walked out of Modelo prison at Bogotá believing he was finally free.
The former Venezuelan military officer had served his full sentence in Colombia for his alleged involvement in Operation Gideon, the botched 2020 attempt to overthrow Mr. Maduro. He was told to complete routine paperwork to finalize his release. Instead, two Colombian police officers were waiting outside.
They arrested Torres again on an international warrant he never knew existed. Now he sits in detention, awaiting extradition to Venezuela, where approximately 36 military members connected to Operation Gideon already languish in what his sister, Fatima Secaya Torres, describes as torture chambers.
“How can my brother, who was under house arrest for years, and was in jail for another three years, how could it be that he didn’t even know that there was an international arrest warrant against him?” Ms. Torres tells me from an undisclosed location in Colombia, where she has lived in exile since fleeing Venezuela with 14 family members in August 2019.
“They just made him believe you have to go through some paperwork and then you’re free. You will be released, but then they arrest him again.”
Ultimately, the Trump administration’s recent successful capture of Mr. Maduro has not brought relief to families involved in the ill-fated coup effort. The January re-arrest represents the latest chapter in a harrowing saga that has already cost the Torres family two lives, in addition to three brothers imprisoned across two countries and a 71-year-old mother held in solitary confinement in Venezuela on terrorism charges.
Their ordeal illuminates the long, quiet shadow cast by Operation Gideon, the amphibious raid launched from Colombia on May 3, 2020, that the Maduro regime crushed within hours, killing at least eight participants and capturing dozens more.
