The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (2 page)

Later I opened the photos, which had been sent in email attachments. I nearly vomited over my laptop. The pictures didn’t just show dead bodies shot up. One man hung from a goalpost in the prison yard, the rope tied under his arms and around his chest – his head had been cut off. Other bodies had their legs cut off and their insides ripped out. I was horrified that human beings could do this to each other. It didn’t seem possible. But it was, and it happened a lot, the Observatory said. The government did little to tackle it.

So I had my ‘big story’. I had the human-interest angle with Keany and independent comment to support his claims of a prison system run by the inmates themselves, lobbing grenades at each other when they fell out. I set about furiously pitching the story to the newsdesks of the Irish and British newspapers. One tabloid got back to me quickly; they wanted to run the story and needed a photo of Keany. I rang him in the jail on a mobile number for another inmate in his wing. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no way.’ He wouldn’t go with a picture. The tabloid pulled out. Ditto for two other newspapers that wanted to run the piece. No photo, no story.

In the end I salvaged the report and filed a short audio story to Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, talking about Keany and the horrors inside Los Teques and prisons across Venezuela. The three-minute piece went out at about 8 a.m. on a Saturday. It came and passed without comment. No newsdesks beat their way to my door for more stories. No fanfare. Nothing.

I threw in the towel. Another ‘scoop’ had got away. I stayed on in Venezuela for a few more months, then left. I continued with my adventure across the region as a backpacker journalist, which lasted three years, with lengthy stays in Bolivia and Argentina.

On the last leg of my trip, in Colombia, I was burned out. It was time to go. I boarded a flight from Bogotá to Dublin in December 2010 to get home for Christmas. Later, in Dublin airport, I stood in the immigration line. I heard a familiar accent from a passenger in the queue next to me: broad English mixed with Dublin’s northside. He was talking to an immigration official, getting grilled over why he had an emergency passport. ‘It was robbed in Colombia.’

The man walked on, and I was still waiting in line. Then it sank in. That accent and that the guy’s passport had been robbed. Seemed like a suspect story. A tale that an inmate on the run from Venezuela might use . . . It couldn’t be. The seconds passed slowly. Finally I flashed my passport at the official and bolted through the airport. I spotted the same man at the baggage carousel and ran over.

‘How ya doing?’ I said. ‘We met in Venezuela.’ I was sure it was Keany now. The face was familiar but gaunt. I remembered him having fuller features. He studied me for a moment.

‘You came in to see me in Los Teques.’ He smiled. ‘The reporter.’

I said I was. I then did the maths in my head. I had last seen him two years ago in jail and he had had at least another seven years of his sentence left then. ‘We did a runner,’ he said, ‘got out on parole and bussed it to Colombia.’ He introduced me to a man in his mid 20s standing next to him, who had also been locked up in Los Teques and had fled from Venezuela with him.

In later weeks, Keany and I met up as agreed. We both joked that it was mind-boggling we ended up on the same flight home from South America. What were the chances? Paul said he wanted to tell the world his story and asked if I would help him write it. You bet I would. Over the following months I spent countless hours hearing tales from a twisted world that swirled around in a cocktail of drugs, violence, death and squalor, all recalled with the aid of extensive diaries Keany had kept.

Of course I knew he was no angel. He was a convicted cocaine smuggler. But had I judged him I couldn’t have written this story. So I put my journalist hat on and sat on the fence – a challenge at times. Still, Keany put his hands up from the word go and admitted he was guilty and what he did was wrong. And no matter what he’d done, he didn’t deserve to be sexually assaulted by anti-drugs cops. No one deserves that. And that act is proof that the line between criminals and law-enforcement officers in Venezuela is blurred at best.

In the following pages you will read about Keany’s fight for survival in a dark and violent place. Yet there are light moments, where you will laugh out loud at some incredible and humorous tales. Above all, you will know the truth – the truth of what happens behind the bars in Venezuela’s jails, as told by Keany with courage and honesty: his tale from a dark world where every day could have been his last. This is his story.

IT WON’T HAPPEN TO ME. THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT WHEN I GOT ON THE PLANE to Venezuela. But it did – I got caught. It’s funny, before I embarked on that ill-fated trip I used to watch the
Banged Up Abroad
series on the telly. Tales of Western drug mules locked up in fleapit prisons in the tropics. All had the same story – went on a ‘holiday’ to everywhere from Jamaica to Thailand to bring back a few kilos of coke or heroin in their suitcase or swallowed in capsules. A few thousand quid for their troubles. All ‘easy’ money. Then the cops nab them at the airport.

Looking back, I don’t know why it didn’t sink in that it could happen to me – it just didn’t. I was forty-five with two teenage kids – I should have known better. For a payment of ten thousand euro I went to Venezuela to bring back to Dublin a suitcase packed with almost six kilos of cocaine. I didn’t even know where the country was. I had to look it up on a map on the Internet before I left. The whole idea was stupid, but I needed the money. My plumbing business went bust at the beginning of the recession. I had a small bank loan and a new work van on finance and couldn’t make the payments on either. My daughter was also living with me, and I wanted to keep her going too. The ten grand would have sorted me out.

In the end, I got to Caracas fine and picked up the ‘goods’. On the way out at the airport, the cops moved in on me. I ended up in my own
Banged Up Abroad
. I was convicted for drug smuggling and sentenced to eight years in Los Teques jail.

I deserved it, you say. Drugs are bad, and anyone involved with them should be locked up and have to suffer. I accept that. I had no problem doing the time. But I was locked up in a cruel, violent world where I was abused, dehumanised, stabbed, had to dodge bullets and nearly lost my life. No one deserves that, I say.

And if the purpose of prison was to punish me for smuggling drugs and reform me, that didn’t work either. I quickly went from a drug mule to a dealer inside Los Teques. It was the only way I could survive, the only way I could buy basics, such as a floor cushion to sleep on and a plate and mug to eat and drink with. Nothing was ‘on the house’. I then went from dealing cocaine to becoming psychologically addicted to it. I needed a few lines to get through the day and night. All in all, I was sentenced for smuggling cocaine, then sent into a world where there was more coke than in all the streets of Ireland and Britain. No reform there.

Walking through the gates of Los Teques was like walking through a time warp. It was like going back 100 years into a Victorian jail. I had to sleep on the floor of a toilet for months and was later ‘promoted’ to a spot on the floor in the wing yard. Only after about a year did I get a bed – and only after paying about 150 euro to a cell-block inmate boss for the privilege. I had to share a toilet with up to 200 men and often ended up going in a bag when my bowels couldn’t wait for the queues to end. The Venezuelans fought back at the authorities the only way they knew how – by kidnapping the visitors and hunger striking to have their demands for better conditions met. They rarely were, and the cycle went on. For some, the conditions and daily mental and physical torture became too much and they escaped – by cutting their own throats.

In Los Teques the cell-block bosses, or jefes, ran the show. They were inmates who ran their wings with their elected ‘army councils’. They upheld the rule of law armed to the teeth with Uzis and grenades. They decided who lived or died and how much causa, or protection money, the prisoners in their wings had to pay them. Rows that erupted between rival cell blocks left scores dead and injured, and made headlines around the world.

The National Guard troops, who police the jails, had a hands-off approach to what went on inside the prison. Their job was to count heads and lock gates. They let the jefes run the show inside, while they sat back and profited from selling coke and arms to them – guns they would seize in ‘random’ searches and which miraculously ended up back in the hands of the inmate bosses. If I had been locked up for being a criminal, I often wondered which side of the bars I should be on. Even most of the lawyers and prison cops were bent – always on the take, offering to get us out for money. Yet few did. It was all one big rotten cesspit. An upside-down world. Surreal. I often expected the walls to open up and to see Steven Spielberg with a load of cameras.

From day one, my goal was to get out as quick as I could. I aimed for parole after 18 months inside and got it, thanks to a great lawyer. I was supposed to stay in Caracas for the next five years on parole. But after just a few days in the city I knew I had to get out of Venezuela altogether. I had a family to get back to. With my wits and some money, I fled across to neighbouring Colombia and then home.

I’m writing this story because I have to. It helps me deal with my demons. It is a tale of a stupid drug mule locked up in an evil world, and if it stops just one person from doing what I did, it will be worth it.

I HEAR A NAME CALLED OUT OVER THE AIRPORT’S PA SYSTEM: ‘PASSENGER Keany, Paul.’ Jesus, it can’t be. I think I’m hearing things. ‘Passenger Keany, Paul.’ Again. No doubting it. My stomach knots. I hear it again, but this time among a dozen or so other passenger names. I begin to relax. Must be just some formality.

I’m leaning against a wall at a crowded boarding gate. I’m looking out at a twin-engine Airbus parked on the airport apron outside, its nose pointing towards the departures. I walk up to the Air France boarding gate. I join a queue with the other travellers called to step forward. I’m at the back. Two air stewardesses are checking passports. We step forwards one by one. I presume – or hope – we’re being called to file onto the back of the plane. I know I’m seated there. The hostess glances at my passport and gives me a smile. ‘Enjoy your flight, sir.’ I nod and walk on. I’m a respectable businessman, of course, standing there in a suit – a sharp jacket, Ralph Lauren shirt and a tie, dark-blue slacks and black dress shoes.

Another stewardess ushers the group into the tunnel that leads to the aircraft – my lift home. A door suddenly opens to the left. A gust of hot air whooshes in. A male flight attendant waves us out the door. I step through and squint in the blinding midday sun. Below, I see two cops standing at the bottom of a concrete staircase. They’re wearing bulletproof jackets. ‘
Policía
’ is emblazoned across the front. Their hands hover near their pistols.

Oh my God. Alarm bells go off in my head. This looks like it’s going wrong.

I follow the others. We file down the steps onto the tarmac below. The two policemen call us forward – a mixed bunch, mainly young backpacker types dressed in shorts and T-shirts. I hover at the back of the group and we walk under the terminal. The cops walk close behind me. They lead us over to an area into the bowels of the airport. Awaiting us are about 20 security personnel: airport police, cops and the Venezuelan National Guard. Then I see it: the ‘
Antidrogas
’ emblem on one of the officer’s uniforms.

My heart sinks. I panic. What have I done? What about my family at home? How will I tell them? My son and daughter, how will I break it to them? This was just supposed to be a free holiday in the sun. A few quid for carrying a suitcase home.

Two Guardia Nacional (National Guard) troops in olive-green uniforms each stand next to a suitcase. The passengers I see are all travelling alone – like me. The guards, armed with Kalashnikovs, call them over to their luggage. I also step forward. The cop beside me puts his arm out and stops me. ‘
Tú, no,
’ (‘Not you’) he says.

It’s over. I can feel it. I want to vomit.

The troops busy themselves opening the suitcases next to a machine that looks like an X-ray scanner. Cartons of cigarettes are pulled out. The boxes are ripped and thrown on the ground. There are also bottles of Venezuelan rum. The cops open them and sniff inside. ‘No, no,’ shout the French passengers. Their protests fall on deaf ears. The cops continue the search.

Now the check of their bags is over and they start to file off. One by one I watch them leave. I watch the last one walk away, wanting to run after him. I want to scream, ‘It’s him, it’s him you’re after.’ But I don’t.

Out of the corner of my eye I spot my suitcase, wrapped in the cellophane I thought would provide extra security. I paid about five euro in the departures halls for the shrink-wrap service.

All the guards and airport police are watching me now. I feel their eyes burning into me. I feel my life slipping away. The search of the other passengers was all just a decoy to get me – the big fish. I know it now. Keep your cool, I tell myself. It’s not over yet.

I hear the footsteps of one cop behind me coming closer. He stops. More officials are everywhere now: customs, police, the drug squad, army, about 30 of them. The cop waves me forward. He babbles in Spanish something about a
maleta
(suitcase). I shrug; I haven’t a clue what he’s saying. But I know what’s going on. I’m sweating now. I look around. Nowhere to run. One of the soldiers walks away. All the cops seem to be waiting for someone. Minutes tick away like hours.

Now an older officer in his 40s arrives and steps in front of me. ‘This you case?’ he says in English, interpreting for another cop. His face is stiff. No expression.

‘It looks like mine, but I’m not 100 per cent,’ I say, looking at my name scrawled in my handwriting on a tag hanging off the handle.

‘
Sí,
’ he tells the other guards, not bothering to interpret my false doubt. ‘We have reason to believe you have
contrabanda
inside,’ he says.