“As we speak in Venezuela, crimes continue to be committed with impunity,” Paolina Massidda, representative of the Public Defense Office for Victims of the International Criminal Court (ICC), closed her intervention. The perfect culmination of two historic sessions, the public hearing before the Appeals Chamber of the ICC that must decide whether to continue the investigation against Nicolás Maduro, generals and collaborators in the crimes against humanity committed for years.
Massidda does not exaggerate. Beyond the fact that at this moment 271 political prisoners remain in Maduro’s dungeons, among them three women and a man with Spanish nationality, torture and abuse are the order of the day. Only five prisoners have benefited so far from the Barbados Accords between the government and the opposition and with the United States as the instigator.
Among the latest violations of the revolution, the illegal detention 70 days ago and the torture applied to the Anthropology and Law student John Álvarez, 24, who was forced to record some videos against unionists who protest against the government, stand out. . The mistreatment has caused loss of vision, kidney failure and paralysis in one leg.
“The strategy adopted by the State is absurd for an international court, based on the fact that it is a sovereign country to investigate and that it is doing so. The Prosecutor’s Office asked them if they were investigating 63 specific cases and they said that they had 15 officials convicted, all of them They are of low hierarchy and, what is more important, the investigation was not for crimes against humanity,” Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal, an organization that defends a good part of Venezuelan political prisoners, summarized for EL MUNDO.
In fact, Massidda introduced in his argument the content of a letter sent to the ICC by the Penal Forum, which demonstrates that in Venezuela there are no laws that regulate the Rome Statute. “This is very solid and irrefutable: it cannot be investigated because there is no law,” Romero stated.
Since an obstacle course in search of justice began in 2018, this is the first time they have seen each other in court. And two very expensive lawyers have stood out on the Chavista bench: the famous English lawyer Ben Emmerson, protagonist of such renowned cases as the defense of the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda in Europe and of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks activist, and, in the background , the Spanish Aitor Martínez Jiménez, belonging to the office of former judge Baltasar Garzón.
Emmerson, who wanted to justify his fame with arrogance but with very weak arguments, has also defended Carlos Puigdemont and other leaders of the independence movement before the United Nations, such as Oriol Junqueras and the Jordis, Cuixart and Sánchez.
Garzón, for his part, is one of Maduro’s favorite lawyers. The former Spanish judge has defended the Colombian tycoon Alex Saab, figurehead of the “people’s president” currently imprisoned in the US and has also participated in Spanish courts in the lawsuit filed by Nicolasito Maduro, son of the Chavista dictator, against human rights defender Tamara Suju.
Today he has become one of the stars of the Puebla Group, which brings together populist, revolutionary, leftist or progressive leaders from Latin America with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Garzón recently visited Caracas with his partner, the former Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado. They were both seen at the Humboldt Hotel at the top of Ávila, today converted into the most emblematic place of the millionaire bubble for plugged-ins created by the revolution.
