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El Helicoide: The Shopping Mall That Became a Torture Prison

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Venezuela El Helicoide: The Shopping Mall That Became A Torture Prison

26/01/2019 GMT

BBC World News - El Helicoide: The Shopping Mall That Became a Torture Prison

The shopping mall that became a torture prison, faces horrific human rights abuses.

Karenina Velandia explores El Helicoide in Venezuela, and looks at how it came to be one of the country's most notorious prisons and talks to former prisoners and guards.

El Helicoide in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, was designed as a shopping mall in the 1950s, but today hundreds of people are packed inside this space-age building, where criminals live alongside political prisoners. All face horrific human rights abuses. It's a building whose extraordinary history mirrors that of Venezuela itself. Karenina Velandia explores how it came to be one of the country's most notorious prisons and talks to former prisoners and guards.

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