“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 ICC Appeals Chamber that must decide If the investigation against Nicolás Maduro continuesgenerals and collaborators in crimes against humanity committed for years.
Massidda does not exaggerate. Beyond 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. 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 of low hierarchy and, what is more important, the investigation was not for crimes against humanity,” he summarized for THE WORLD Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal, an organization that defends a good part of Venezuelan political prisoners.
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 irreplaceable“It cannot be investigated because there is no law,” Romero stated.