MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Nahuel Gallo describes torture and a sardonic “you're off to Disney” during Venezuela detention

Gallo remained virtually incommunicado for more than a year. He was freed on 1 March 2026, three weeks after Maduro's capture

Argentine gendarme Nahuel Gallo, who spent 448 days detained in Venezuela under the regime of Nicolás Maduro, described in a televised interview the torture inflicted on him at the El Rodeo I prison and revealed the phrase his captors used to announce his confinement: “You're off to Disney.”

Speaking to Argentine broadcaster TN in an interview aired Saturday, the first corporal of the National Gendarmerie's Squadron 27, based in Uspallata, Mendoza province, reconstructed the events of 8 December 2024, when he tried to enter Venezuela from the Colombian city of Cúcuta to visit his wife and son. Immigration officers, he said, “didn't pay attention to the papers” and demanded to inspect his phone. “They wanted to see if I had photos with weapons. They went straight into my WhatsApp and told me, 'I want to see if you've been speaking ill of my president,'” he recalled. A search for the name “Chávez” turned up nothing, but a search for “Maduro” did. “That was the trigger for them.”

From that moment, according to his account, the beatings began. “They pushed me, they told me to kneel. They hit me in the abdomen, in the head, slapped me. They covered my head,” he said. When officials discovered he was a gendarme — Gallo had said he worked at Customs — he was transferred to El Rodeo I, on the outskirts of Caracas, one of the country's most feared prisons. There, he alleged, “they strip you naked, you're handcuffed, and they spray pepper gas at you.”

Gallo remained virtually incommunicado for more than a year. He was freed on 1 March 2026, three weeks after Maduro's capture and as part of the prisoner-release process led by the transitional government of interim President Delcy Rodríguez. His repatriation was arranged through regional football channels, with the involvement of the Argentine Football Association, the Venezuelan Football Federation, and CONMEBOL.

On 17 April, Gallo joined as a private complainant in the case opened in Argentine federal court against Maduro and other senior chavista figures for crimes against humanity, requesting recognition as a “direct victim.” On 30 April, he filed his first formal criminal complaint over the torture suffered in captivity. The Organization of American States had at the time classified the detention as a crime against humanity. Argentina's Foreign Ministry, headed by Pablo Quirno, continues to demand the release of Germán Giuliani and other citizens deprived of liberty in Venezuela on political grounds.