El Helicoide is a building in Caracas, Venezuela owned by the Venezuelan government and used as a facility and prison for both regular and political prisoners of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service. In the shape of a three-sided pyramid, it was originally constructed as a shopping mall, but never completed. Prisoners describe it as a place where systemic torture and human rights violations occur. The Guardian describes it as a "high-profile prison for political detainees" where prisoners report "people being beaten, electrocuted, hung by their limbs, forced into stress positions and forced to plunge their face into a bag of faeces and breathe in".