The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare
Read The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare Online
Authors: Jeff Farrell,Paul Keany
Paul Keany was born in Oxford, England, to Irish parents. In his late teens he joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice electrical engineer. After three years of dull toil on dry land he went AWOL and followed his parents to Dublin, where they had retired. He never left and has called it home for the past 30 years. In his last career he ran a one-man plumbing business till it hit the rocks in the recession. What he did to try to clear his debts can be found in the pages of this book. An aspiring novelist, he hopes it’ll be the first book of many. He has two children – Katie and Daniel – from a previous marriage.
Jeff Farrell is an independent journalist. He spent three years working as a stringer in South America, reporting across the region for media including
The Guardian
, the
Daily Telegraph
, the
Miami Herald
and Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. He first interviewed Paul Keany in the notorious Los Teques prison, Venezuela – and Farrell is glad he got his story and made it out alive. For now he has returned to his home city of Dublin, where he craves a new adventure after months chained to his laptop writing Keany’s story. He is a former staff journalist with Independent News and Media plc. He holds an MA in Journalism and is a member of the International Federation of Journalists. This is his first book.
http://jefffarrelljournalism.com/
A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare
Paul Keany with Jeff Farrell
To my family, especially my children, Katie and Daniel, and friends. Thanks to you all for standing by me. Also to Father Pat and Viviana: I owe you my life. To anyone thinking of smuggling coke for ‘easy’ money – don’t do it. You might end up dead.
Paul Keany
To the many great people I met during my travels in Venezuela: the horrors in this story show the tragic side of your country, not your strength in spirit and wonderful hospitality.
Que la verdad les haga libres
.
Jeff Farrell
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK JEFF FARRELL FOR HIS HARD WORK IN PUTTING THIS book together with me, and for quickly getting a publisher on board. Thanks to the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas for their help. Big thanks also to all my friends for support with the ‘escape fund’: Barry Fitz, Dave Riley, Pat Keany, Kev Cummins and Big Frankie.
Paul Keany
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK FATHER PAT FOR HIS HELP IN CLINCHING THE interview with Paul Keany inside Los Teques, a meeting that sowed the seeds for this book; to Rory Carroll of
The Guardian
for a roof over my head in Caracas, and endless journalistic advice – I owe you a big one; to Paul Keany for always being at my beck and call for interviews; to Dermot Deely for a place to write in Dublin; to my mother, Noeleen, for getting the manuscript to the publisher and always having positive words; to all my family – hopefully this time I have something to show for yet another epic adventure abroad – the ‘real job’ awaits!; to Donal Allman for feedback on an early draft; to Ciaran Cassidy of RTÉ’s
Documentary on One
for last-minute editing on the radio version of the story to ensure it was sanitised enough for a daytime audience, and overall excellent production work; to my book editor Karyn Millar; to the universe for the ‘coincidence’ of myself and Keany being on the same flight home – without it this book wouldn’t exist; and to everyone else there’s no space to mention.
Jeff Farrell
CONTENTS
6. Los Teques: An Explosive Start
18. United Nations Behind Bars
BECAUSE OF THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF THE REVELATIONS AND ISSUES IN this book, almost all names have been changed. Some of the inmates featured in the book, for example, are still in the Venezuelan prison system. Others involved in the welfare of prisoners want to be able to continue to visit inmates to give them support in any way they can. They have asked not to be named, fearing they would not be allowed to enter the jails again. The Venezuelan government is highly sensitive to criticisms of the deplorable and dangerous conditions in its prisons.
At times I have taken liberties with dialogue, putting quote marks around speech when it was recalled from Paul Keany’s memory, so it therefore might not be totally accurate. That said, much of it is faithful and is taken from Keany’s extensive diaries, which he kept on a daily basis to record his life and events inside Los Teques prison.
Jeff Farrell
THE PRISON COP SAT ON A CHAIR IN THE PASSAGEWAY, HIS EYES RISING UP from the floor to the gringo visitor walking towards him. ‘Maxima,’ I said. He stood up slowly, not bothering to answer, and took a truncheon from the holster on his navy uniform. He rapped it three times against a steel door to my right. A hatch slid back in the centre of the door and two eyeballs peeped out. A bolt slid back. The door eased open slowly. In front of me stood a teenager, no older than 18 or 19, dressed in white tracksuit bottoms. My eyes dropped down to the long metal object dangling from his hand. It was a shotgun. It didn’t make sense. Why was this prison guard not in uniform?
‘
Visita
,’ I said. The gun-toting teenager stood aside. I stepped past him into a hallway in the Maxima wing. It was visit day and full of life. A tall, lean guy wearing jeans and a wine-coloured shirt walked up to me.
‘
A quien buscas?
’ (‘Who are you looking for?’) he asked. My eyes dropped down to his hand, which was casually holding a black revolver in front of his chest. Strange, I thought again. Another guard with no uniform. My eyes rose back up to his face.
‘Paul,’ I said. He nodded and walked off. After months of trying to get into Los Teques jail to interview a cocaine smuggler of Irish-British nationality, I was finally getting to talk to him. While I waited, I looked around. There were men, women and children sitting around on stools, chatting. Salsa music blared from a stereo in the corner, next to a Christmas tree with twinkling lights. It was Sunday, and visit day was in full swing in the prison on the outskirts of Caracas.
The minutes passed and my thoughts went back to wondering why armed prison guards would wear street clothes. Minutes earlier I had been searched at the jail gate by soldiers brandishing machine guns and my passport ID was checked. All seemed normal in a prison. I then looked back at the teenager with the shotgun. He was dancing salsa steps along to the music from the stereo, his weapon swinging back and forth. No one batted an eyelid as to why a prison cop would act so casually. Then I finally accepted the obvious: he wasn’t a cop – he was an inmate, and armed.
Paul Keany stepped into the passageway. Through round-rimmed glasses he gave me a questioning look that said, ‘Who are you?’ I told him I was a journalist, and that Father Patrick, a Caracas-based Irish priest who visited him, had told me how to get into the jail to talk to him and hear his story. I left out the word ‘interview’ so he wouldn’t run off. ‘Father Pat!’ Keany said, smiling now.
We sat down on a bench and started to talk. Keany was forty-five and was in the early months of an eight-year sentence for cocaine smuggling. He was arrested in Maiquetía airport attempting to board a Dublin-bound flight with a stop-off in Paris. The cops had found almost six kilos of cocaine in his suitcase. His story, he told me, wasn’t original. More than 200 other gringo drug mules locked up in Los Teques had the same tale to tell. ‘Almost everybody gets caught.’
‘But the prisoners here,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘they have guns?’
He laughed, explaining that inmate
jefes
, or bosses, and their foot soldiers ran the cell blocks. He had to pay them a
causa
, protection money, every week. ‘Without them I’d be dead. There’s inmates here who’d shoot me up just for being a gringo.’
It was all baffling. We continued to talk, and I wanted to know more. Who had Keany bought the coke from? How much had he been paid? And so on. He was easy to chat with, explaining that he had been offered 10,000 euro by ‘people’ in Dublin to travel to Venezuela and carry drugs home. It would clear the debts he’d built up after his plumbing business went bust in the recession. Then he went on to the more fascinating side of the story: the jail.
Just a few nights before, he said, he had had to listen to a man being slowly knifed to death in a neighbouring wing, whimpering as his life bled away. Another day he had seen a woman’s face shot off by her husband, an inmate off his head on crack. Keany shook his head as he told me this and went on to tell me how the whole prison was effectively in the hands of cell-block bosses. They were armed to the teeth with Uzis, revolvers, shotguns and even grenades. Shoot-outs and random killings were rife. Keany also said that visitors were often held up in the passageways by cell-block outcasts armed with knives. The whole prison was one big killing zone. ‘I could end up coming out of here in a box,’ said Keany. So could I, I thought. A few days earlier I had been robbed in Caracas with a gun held to my head. I was still shaken from it. This place was the last thing I needed. I handed Keany two bags of food I had brought for him, made my excuses and left.
It had taken months to chase down an interview with the
irlandés
in Los Teques. I knew there was a fellow Paddy locked up there from looking at statistics of Irish nationals locked up in the region. But as for who he was or his exact story, I had had no idea. First I followed the usual approach, which other foreign correspondents had told me about, and wrote to the Ministerio de Justicia requesting a formal press visit. I said I wanted to interview the irlandés and show the world how ‘foolish’ it was for gringos to smuggle cocaine through Venezuela. They didn’t buy it and never replied, despite repeated emails, telephone calls and even doorstepping their press office in downtown Caracas.
I refused to give up. I started putting out calls to Irish priests I tracked down in Venezuela. They’d been there decades and were always helpful in lining up contacts and friends for stories I was researching. I got a hold of the details for one priest, Father Pat, and telephoned him. ‘
El padre no se encuentra
,’ (‘The Father isn’t here’) said his housemaid, adding that he was in Los Teques prison. My ears pricked up. There was my key to the story. I was sure he was in visiting the Irishman I knew was locked up there, and when I later got hold of Father Pat he confirmed that was where he had been. I told him of my frustration in trying to get into the prison through the authorities. ‘Go as a visitor,’ he said. ‘Get there on Sunday morning, bring your passport and ask for Paul Keany.’ I was sure the authorities wouldn’t let a gringo past the front gate. Father Pat said they would, and they did.
But now, after the visit, I wondered how much of Keany’s story was really true. Yes, I’d seen the inmates armed with guns through my own eyes – but random killings? A woman’s face shot off by her husband? Inmates paying protection money to stay alive?
I made a call to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, a prisoners’ campaign group. They said
sí
, all the stories were real, and life in Los Teques was the same in all of the country’s 30-odd jails. More than 400 people were killed every year in riots and random shootings, according to their statistics. The biggest body counts happened during prison riots when cell-block bosses fought it out, usually for the control of the supply and sale of coke, or over some other strife. Up to 20 and 30 were killed at a time. To prove it, the Observatory sent me pictures of the aftermath of a riot the year before in Santa Ana, a jail in the south-west of Venezuela, where a reported 19 were killed.