The Daily Journal.- The Office of the Presidency issued an official statement on Monday expressing condolences over the death of citizen Carmen Teresa Navas, which occurred on Sunday, May 17. In the statement, the presidential office reaffirmed that the case involving her son, Víctor Hugo Quero, remains under investigation, as previously ordered by the acting president.
The National Executive clarified that state action began from the very moment the first reported irregularities were processed.
“From the moment the complaint regarding the case of her son, Víctor Hugo Quero, became known, the President ordered a rigorous investigation to clarify what occurred,” the official statement emphasized.
The document further states that “once the investigations are concluded, the country will be broadly informed about the results and the corresponding actions.”
Timeline of the Case
The development of the Víctor Hugo Quero case reveals a severe inconsistency between official state notifications and the evidence gathered by his family. The institutional ordeal began on January 3, 2025, when Quero was arrested and detained at Rodeo I Judicial Detention Center, initiating a period of opacity that his relatives formally denounced as an enforced disappearance.
Facing a lack of answers, his mother, Carmen Teresa Navas, spent months seeking relief through local courts without success. The administrative silence was broken only on May 3, 2026, when the Office of the Ombudsman received the complaint. Four days later, on May 7, 2026, the Ministry for Penitentiary Services released an unexpected statement announcing that the detainee had died nearly a year earlier.
The government’s account maintains that Quero died on July 24, 2025, at the Military Hospital in Caracas due to respiratory failure and that he was buried on July 30 because of the alleged absence of family claims. However, physical and institutional records directly contradict this version: the iron grave marker at the burial site lists the date of death as July 27, 2025.
The most critical inconsistency lies in an official document held by the family dated October 24, 2025, in which the Ministry for Penitentiary Services itself certified in writing that the citizen remained detained at Rodeo I prison—three months after the date on which authorities now claim he died.
After a 16-month search that ended with the exhumation and identification of her son’s body, Carmen Navas, 82, died on Sunday, May 17. Recent reports and human rights documentation have highlighted the public impact of the case and the family’s prolonged search for information regarding Quero’s whereabouts and death.
