BOGOTÁ, Colombia — After being tortured and brutalized during 129 days at El Helicoide, Venezuela's most notorious jail for dissidents, human rights activist Víctor Navarro was determined to expose ...

There was a time when everyone heaped praise on the Helicoide. Poet Pablo Neruda called the building “one of the most exquisite creations to emerge from an architect's mind.” Salvador Dali wanted his ...

To learn about the Holocaust and other horrific events, we can visit museums and historic sites like Auschwitz. But how do we grasp the abuses of modern-day dictators when their jails and torture ...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marked the start of Christmas celebrations on October 1 by launching fireworks from El Helicoide, a Caracas detention facility widely documented as a site of ...

In a 2007 book on El Helicoide, a state-of-the-art mall planned for 1950s Caracas, German-Venezuelan architect Dirk Bornhorst writes, "The whole construction was conceived as an artistic urban ...