The Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (CPI) has decided that the Court’s Prosecutor’s Office will resume its investigation into crimes against humanity that occurred in Venezuela. The investigation had been suspended since April of last year thanks to an appeal filed by the Bolivarian revolution, which claimed to have undertaken the investigation of the crimes.
The request of prosecutor Karim Khan, made in November last year, and the testimonies of 1,875 victims of Chavismo They have weighed more than the observations of the Venezuelan ruling party, reiterated to Khan himself at the beginning of June during the start-up of an office of the Prosecutor’s Office in Caracas.
“The Chamber concluded that although Venezuela is taking some investigative measures, its internal criminal proceedings do not sufficiently reflect the scope of the investigation planned by the Prosecutor’s Office. The focus seems to be generally on the direct and/or lower-level perpetrators,” it argued. the ICC, who has also defined periods of investigative inactivity as “inexplicable”. “They do not reflect the scope of the case,” they concluded in the report.
This process began in 2018 thanks to the initiative of Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru. The decision, received with euphoria by human rights and civil society organizations in Venezuela, was made public one day after the International Day in Support of Victims of Tortureprecisely one of the crimes against humanity investigated along with extra-summarial executions, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and sexual violations.
“It is a historic step towards justice,” reacted the NGO Provea, while Delsa Solórzano, candidate for the opposition primaries, assured that it was a new triumph for the victims and “a new setback for the dictatorship.”