Germán Giuliani, an Argentine lawyer detained in Venezuela since May 2025 after his arrest by security forces, says he fears for his life in a video recorded over the weekend.
“I fear for my life, I fear I won’t get out of this,” says the 49-year-old in the video obtained by his family and broadcast by Argentina’s TN television news channel.
The footage was reportedly recorded shortly after Giuliani’s arrest in May 2025, though it was only released to the media on Saturday.
Giuliani was in Venezuela for work when he was detained between May 21 and May 23 on alleged charges of drug-trafficking and terrorism.
Since then he has been held at various detention centres in Venezuela. According to communications with the family, he is now being held at the Yare II maximum-security prison in the state of Miranda.
The video was recorded on a mobile phone at a detention facility in Caracas “in June 2025,” said Giuliani’s wife, Virginia Rivero.
“I’m here locked up somewhere in Venezuela and have been for more than a week now. They’ve kept me incommunicado for a week. They haven’t told me anything,” the lawyer said at the start of his message.
In his video, Giuliani said that “no citizen in the world deserves” what was happening to him at present.
“Here I feel I have no rights at all and that they’re doing whatever they want, or whatever they feel like, with me,” he said.
Rivero said that she received the video “about 10 days ago” from an anonymous Instagram user, who later deleted the account.
“We’ve only just decided to share it now. We think this helps protect Germán,” the detainee’s wife added.
Rivero has been hoping to be reunited with her husband since January 3, when Venezuela’s deposed president Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and taken to New York in a US military operation in Caracas.
On January 8, the government of interim leader Delcy Rodríguez promised the release of “numerous prisoners.”
However, since then only around 150 people out of more than 800 detained for political reasons have been freed, according to an assessment by various NGOs.
Giuliani is not the only Argentine being held by Venezuela. Another prominent case is Gendarmerie Corporal Nahuel Agustín Gallo, who was arrested on December 8, 2024 as he entered Venezuela via a land border with Colombia to meet his partner and his son.
– TIMES/AFP
Comments