Venezuela: Relatives are said to have locked 13

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Attorney General Tarek William Saab: Serious allegations against six women

Photo: Frederico Parra / AFP

Six women have been arrested in Venezuela for regularly locking a 13-year-old boy with a disability in a wooden cage. The accused, who are said to be relatives of the boy, had starved him in the cage, said Attorney General Tarek William Saab in the online service X (formerly Twitter).

According to the information, the boy was born with a disability. When the police freed him, the 13-year-old had been gagged, according to authorities. Neighbors of the family from a poor neighborhood in the city of Araure in the northwest of the country had tried to lynch his parents after the discovery of the abused boy.

According to local media, the boy had been locked in the cage since the age of six. Prosecutor Saab published a photo of the wooden structure. Accordingly, the child should have had little space in it to move. Cloths were laid out on the floor of the cage.

Neighbors had informed the police about the allegations, the officers then arrested the women on Friday. The boy is now to be accommodated in a home in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.

bbr/AFP