"...Carlos Eduardo Izcaray Pinto, solo cellist of the Venezuela Symphony orchestra, was arrested during the night of March 2 near Altamira Plaza, where he had been watching anti-government protests close to his home. Izcaray told Human Rights Watch that the National Guard had come under a barrage of stones and fireworks and had charged the demonstrators, who ran in all directions. He decided to walk home but was intercepted by a National Guardsman riding a motorbike, who stopped him for questioning. Ignoring his protests that he was only a bystander, the guardsman beat him repeatedly around the head, insulted him, and forced him onto the back of the motorbike. He was later put into a truck in which there were five or six other detainees. He told Human Rights Watch:

The guardsmen in the truck continued to hit me on the neck and body with their nightsticks, helmets, and even traffic cones. One hit me on the elbow with a stick so hard that my arm and hand went numb. Another emptied a teargas bomb and smeared the contents on my hair and face, then set light to my hair, burning my neck. One guy put a pistol in my mouth and made me repeat a phrase after him, "I am going home to my husband." I suppose it was meant to humiliate me.

After a while they moved us into a second truck. Inside, they made us inhale tear gas after closing the canvas sides of the truck and putting on their gas masks. They threw one of the big [teargas] bombs inside, closed all the doors and if any one pushed on the canvas sides to escape they got beaten. My lungs were burning and I really thought I was going to die. Eventually I managed to get out the side of the vehicle and they didn't try to stop me.

We were taken to the 51st Detachment of the National Guard at El Paraso in Western Caracas. They made us all kneel in a corner looking at the ground and they hit anyone who moved with their helmets or sticks. Then they gave me electric shocks on the neck and arms from some equipment I couldn't see because it was above my head.Izcaray told Human Rights Watch that there were three minors in the group with whom he was arrested, including a fifteen-year-old. "They were treated as badly as the rest of us. The guards made us stand up and sit down in quick order and the slowest would get teargas powder thrown in his eyes. Most of the time it was the kid they threw the powder at."

According to Izcaray's father, orchestral conductor Felipe Izcaray, "Carlos was released thanks to a kindly soul in the National Guard who allowed him to make a phone call, as he was on a list of people to be transferred to La Planta. The alert mobilized his family, friends and colleagues and he was eventually set free, but he was not allowed to see his lawyer during all the time he was detained." Carlos Izcaray told Human Rights Watch that, before he was released, a National Guard officer warned him of reprisals if he publicly denounced his maltreatment. When Human Rights Watch spoke to him on March 19, he said that his hand was still numb and he was unable to hold the bow of his cello. ..."

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/12/venezu8423.htm