Sentences of up to 30 years for suspects of assaulting Nicolás Maduro in 2018

A Venezuelan court sentenced a former opposition MP and 16 others to five to 30 years’ imprisonment for their role in an alleged failed attack on President Nicolás Maduro in 2018.

Juan Requesens, who was part of the previous parliament elected in 2015, controlled by the opposition, was sentenced to eight years in prison “for the crime of conspiracy,” tweeted his lawyer, Joel García, after a hearing held. early morning.

Of the total number of convicts, 12 received the maximum sentence of 30 years.. The rest at 24, 20 and five, in addition to the eight that the former deputy received.

The prosecution filed a complaint of terrorism, conspiracy, qualified voluntary homicide capable of frustrating the President of the Republic, treason and throwing explosives in public places, among others.

“These kinds of acts cannot go unpunished and deserve the maximum penalty,” Attorney General Tarek William Saab said in a speech.

cross-accusations

The sentence comes exactly four years later the explosion of two drones near a stage where Maduro was conducting an act with soldiers on August 4, 2018.

Venezuelan authorities then accused the government of planning the attack, in collaboration with the United States and Peru, on outgoing Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Requesens was arrested three days later, along with about thirty people, including a councilor who died in the custody of the secret services (Sebin).

“These convictions are intended to support the false narrative of power about an alleged murder attempt. They are ‘scapegoats’,” attorney Gonzalo Himiob, of the NGO Foro Penal, who deals with AFP, told AFP. cases of political prisoners.

A few days after his arrest, the government showed Requesens, now 33, in a video in which he admitted having had contact with one of the suspects involved in the incident. The opposition denounced that the then legislator had been threatened or drugged.

Process and disputes

Saab specified that “91 hearings were held, 60 experts attended, 193 officials in charge and 36 witnesses testified”.

“There was an opportunity, within what entails the right to a fair trial, to a fair trial,” he added.

But even before the sentence was written by the lawyer Garcia the prosecution was unable to prove his guilt. “The judge has no way of condemning you and you must be acquitted, but our justice has been kidnapped”, he remarked.

Requesens was held at the Sebin office until 2020, when he received the benefit of house arrest. It is unclear whether this measure will be maintained.

“The eternal repudiation of tyrants and tyranny,” tweeted the convict’s father, also called Juan Requesens.

“The dictatorship has kidnapped him and keeps him deprived of his freedom as a mechanism of persecution of an entire society that resists,” opposition leader Juan Guaidó also said on Twitter.

Foro Penal – which as of August 1 had 245 political prisoners in Venezuela – highlighted the 30-year sentence of Emirlendris Benítez and Yolmer Escalona, ​​who “provided a taxi service to people they did not know (who had been requested) when they been arrested “.

“There is no evidence linking her to any of these crimes,” said Himiob, who indicated that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in 2021 that Benítez’s detention “had been arbitrary and urged the Venezuelan state to release it. ” , but “none of this has been taken into consideration by the court”.

Army General Héctor Hernández Da Costa, 56, sentenced to 16 years, also has a request for release from the UN group, according to his daughter, Loredana Hernández.

“We ask for a miracle, that there is justice, what has just happened is the clearest reflection that there is no justice in our country,” he told AFP.

Maduro, in power since 2013, recalled on Twitter the “day when the enemies attacked the peace of Venezuela”. “We stand firm, united, aware and fighting,” he said.

Source: AFP

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