Last Updated: November 6, 2022

​

Jerrel Lloyd Kenemore is an innocent, 52 year old American man who is currently wrongfully detained on false charges in the Venezuela DGCIM.  He had been living abroad and working remotely as a software engineer in Columbia since 2019.

​

This is a good decent man who was human trafficked by an armed gang, while he was there trying to help his girlfriend and future stepsons go on to live a safer happier life, away from an abusive marriage.   He’s not a spy and he’s never worked for the US government in any capacity.  He’s not a criminal and has a good record to my knowledge. What he is, is a political prisoner suffering the consequences of bad foreign affairs and sanctions that have absolutely nothing to do with Jerrel Lloyd Kenemore.

 

Prior to this, he had met and was in a online relationship with a Venezuelan woman named Yasmina Guillearte as his motivation for moving there.  He had the proper visas to cross the border into Venezuela in the weeks before. He had traveled with Yasmina and some of her family into Venezuela to settle Yasmina’s debts from her previous marriage, including paying her ex husband for his half of the home Yasmina and her two teenage sons had shared with her ex-husband to get him to agree to favorable custody terms.

 

Just shortly  before  his arrest, he had actually returned from Venezuela back over to the Columbia side.

 

While Jerrel and their group were traveling back into Columbia, he was abducted near a Columbia grocery store by an armed gang who attempted to extort him and his family for money.  No one had a satisfactory sum to pay them, so they took him to the border and forced him to cross, at gun point to face the immigration authorities.  From there he was arrested March 17, 2022 on the false charges of espionage and counter intelligence. 

​

Upon his arrest, he was put into the notoriously dangerous DGCIM where he was kept in isolation for the first 40 or so days.  Once his time in isolation was ended, he was put in a cell in the basement and has been there ever since.  

 

He has been there 234 days now, as of November 6th, 2022.

 

During that time , his human rights have been violated on an almost-daily basis. The Subdirector, Marlon Salas Rivas, has overseen torture and abuse. Jerrel has suffered some physical abuse himself by the guards on multiple occasions. He’s been stripped naked and handcuffed to a chair for at hours at one of his court appearances only to be seen by a Judge with no translator given to him to plead his case. The guards under Rivas’ direction have been sadistic in their treatment of him. These guards have hogtied him multiple times while holding a loaded rifle to the back of his head, threatening to just shoot him immediately.

​

Since Jerrel’s detainment, he has attempted suicide twice already.  He has had chronic severe depression since he was a teenager and needs maintenance medication to treat it. But he has not always been permitted medication that I provide for him myself. The MSP that was installed to provide protection and these acts of torture are powerless when the orders to mistreat the prisoners are coming straight from the Subdirector to his Boleita guards. 

 

The Subdirector have also refused to let the Americans go outside for the last 2 weeks.

 

That being said, Jerrel does say the most severe abuse and torture is mostly done to the Venezuelan prisoners in the presence of the Americans.  i. e.  testing a car battery on these human beings in front of them.  The worst violations he has personally suffered is the intense psychological torture and stress he endures on a daily basis by the Subdirector and his guards. 

 

The most important thing I want you to understand about my brother is that he has tried to be patient and help take care of the other prisoners as well. 

 

Recently, another American political prisoner in Venezuela was declared wrongfully detained.  

​

This declaration, while totally justified, hurt him terribly because he had not also been declared despite their detainments beginning roughly the same time. This declaration reinforced the narrative of Rivas and his guards have been taunting him with. They have taunted him before and especially after October 1 that the US abandoned Jerrel because he doesn’t matter.  So now as part of his demands, he is asking for the State Department to declare him wrongfully detained and for negotiations for the release of the Americans to continue.

 

Jerrel has been on a hunger strike as protest of this torture still happening to Americans and Venezuelans since October 1. 

 

He went for 11 days before he was convinced to allow himself to eat to be treated with steroids and antibiotics for 3 days. They has withheld Jerrel’s water for 3 days in the last month that we know of. Jerrel resumed his  hunger strike after 3 days when they gave his tea and kettle I sent but would not give him water.