A/HRC/45/33 36. State intelligence services have played an integral part in the patterns of violations committed. The intelligence agencies identified targets; carried out arrests, detentions and interrogations; and tortured or inhumanely treated detainees. Detainees were held mainly in intelligence service headquarters in Caracas, outside the purview of the penitentiary system. (a) Bolivarian National Intelligence Service 37. The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service conducts civilian intelligence and counter-intelligence activities against perceived or potential threats to the State, whether internal or external. It advises the executive on security and defence matters. 38. The mission investigated 33 cases, involving 21 male and 12 female victims, in which it found reasonable grounds to believe that the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service had arbitrarily arrested, detained and/or tortured or ill-treated people for political motives. Of these cases, 13 are detailed as case studies in the full report. 39. Most of the arrests followed a period of surveillance and investigation. The arrests took place in a range of circumstances: in the arrestee’s home, in public places or while arrestees were driving. The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service searched arrestees’ homes and seized items without presenting a search warrant. 40. A former employee of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service told the mission that the orders determining who would be investigated often came from President Maduro and Diosdado Cabello.7 The orders were issued to the Director General of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, who passed instructions to the operational directorates. 41. The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service frequently made arrests without warrants, particularly prior to 2019. Many political dissidents were purportedly arrested in flagrante delicto, despite the fact that no crime was actually in progress or had just been committed. 42. In several of the cases investigated, officials of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service used force or violence during arrests, despite witnesses stating – or video footage showing – that the arrestees were not violent or resisting arrest. Bolivarian National Intelligence Service officials forcibly entered homes, breaking down doors or entering through windows. 43. The mission has reasonable grounds to believe that in several cases, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service falsified evidence, including planting evidence on the victims, especially firearms, and/or distorting the results of home or car raids. 44. A common pattern was that high-level government officials made public statements referring to detentions either shortly before or shortly after they took place and commenting on the criminal responsibility of the accused. In some cases, government officials announced that the detentions had taken place as part of the Tun Tun Operation announced by Mr. Cabello in his television programme Con el Mazo Dando. 45. Those arrested were brought either to the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service headquarters in Plaza Venezuela or to its El Helicoide building, both in Caracas. Once there, officials interrogated detainees without the presence of a lawyer and/or refused to allow them to contact their lawyers when requested. 46. The mission has reasonable grounds to believe that some political opponents and persons associated with them were subject to short-term enforced disappearance during the period under review. The mission documented cases in which Bolivarian National Intelligence Service officials and other authorities either denied having the person in detention or told family members and lawyers trying to locate them that they did not have any information. The whereabouts of detainees remained unknown for periods ranging from a few days – in most cases – to several weeks. 47. The mission found reasonable grounds to believe that Bolivarian National Intelligence Service agents tortured or subjected detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. 7 6 Mission interview C2HH03, June 2020.