Rory Daniel BRANKER

Image Credit: La Patilla

On 20 February 2025, officers from Venezuela’s Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) intercepted Rory Branker in Caracas and forced him into a vehicle. Authorities also raided his home, confiscating two laptops and two mobile phones. 

On 26 February 2025, Venezuela’s Minister of the Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, stated on his television programme Con el mazo dando that Branker ‘was captured for extorting people through the publication of false information and other crimes (...) to create media narratives against the government and the people of Venezuela’.  

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favour of Rory Branker, in the belief that he faces a serious, urgent risk of suffering irreparable harm to his rights to life and personal integrity, on 29 August 2025. 

Initially held at Maripérez Police Base, after seven months, Branker was transferred between several jails before he was finally transferred to the Tocorón Penitentiary Centre in Aragua state. Branker’s arbitrary detention was marked by enforced disappearance, transfers without notification, prolonged incommunicado detention, procedural opacity and the absence of full guarantees of legal defence. Rory Daniel Branker, born in 1978, is a columnist on various platforms, a journalist, and editor of La Patilla. 

Update

Branker was released on 4 February 2026, after being subjected to arbitrary detention for almost a year. He was formally charged the following day with five offences, including ‘financing terrorism’ and ‘treason’. He remains subject to a travel ban, is barred from speaking to the press and has to report to the authorities approximately once a month.