Contradictory versions regarding the “suicide” in a cell of the Chavista official Leoner Azuaje, president of Cartones de Venezuela until his arrest in the midst of the anti-corruption purge ordered by Nicolás Maduro. His family has made a desperate appeal to ask for protection, they have even gone to the Embassy of Spain and Peru in the face of threats received and in request for justice, a demand that also resonates from revolutionary ranks.
“The conclusion of the autopsy resulted in the citizen dying of mechanical suffocation due to neck constriction by hanging. He was suspended using sheets to hang himself in the room where he was being held,” said Chavista prosecutor Tarek William Saab, who added that Azuaje left several letters to their relatives to communicate their decision.
Sources linked to the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin), in whose investigation unit he was awaiting an alleged transfer to prison where the “suicide” took place, maintain that Azuaje had suffered “negative thoughts” for three months. According to this theory, the senior Chavista official hung himself from an electrical wiring tube at dawn with the help of a rope made from a sheet and a blanket. Azuaje took advantage of the fact that his custodian would have gone to look for food for him.
The official explanation has not convinced independent observers, such as former prosecutor Zair Mundaray, now in exile in Colombia. “If they knew that he was supposedly in a depressive state, how do they put him in a cell alone, isolated, with pipes in the ceiling and a sheet?” Mundaray wonders.
The leaked photos of the corpse also show “the hanging groove that looks like anything but a sheet. And the histology? If you hang a dead man, it also makes a groove, only without vital reaction,” warned the former prosecutor.
The official report makes no mention of other types of injuries, which local journalist Javier Mayorca, a specialist in Events, has highlighted. According to sources inside the morgue, as had happened on previous occasions, the body showed signs of torture: bruises in the middle and lower abdomen, abrasions in the right intercostal region and forearms, and signs of torture on the soles of the feet. .
“The official version is not credible. The torture and murder of prisoners is a recurring practice of the dictatorship: they kill those they imprison without impunity, even if they are from their own environment. There are already 11 people who have died in the custody of the repressive organs “, denounced Juan Guaidó, former interim president of the country.
Different United Nations organizations and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court have reiterated that torture is carried out in Chavismo detention centers. Other fatalities from these practices were opposition councilor Fernando Albán and navy captain Rafael Acosta.
To add even more doubts to this case, the threats against Azuaje’s wife, daughters, mother and sister have been added, who have requested protection from the official bodies and the Embassies of Peru and Spain. “I do not know what is happening, they told us that my husband committed suicide. We demand that they explain to us, we do not understand anything. On social networks, everyone does not believe it. I need support from everyone,” Claudia Pimentel, a widow, cried desperately. from Azuaje.
“We ask for protection because we are afraid. He was not corrupt, he was an blameless human being. They took him from his house, we had six days without hearing from my son. At Sebin they threw the door in our faces. I ask for justice and protection for the family, which is in danger,” added the mother of the deceased.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project