The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suffered a setback when an appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was rejected, in which he demanded to stop the progress of investigations against him for possible crimes against humanity.
“The Appeals Chamber (…) rejects the arguments presented by Venezuela. “Reject the appeals and confirm the contested decision,” Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut told the court based in The Hague, the AFP agency reported.
In November 2021, Venezuela became the first country in Latin America in which the ICC opened a formal investigationafter British prosecutor Karim Khan announced the opening of the case known as “Venezuela I”, for alleged crimes against humanity perpetrated in 2017.
During that year, violent protests against the Maduro government were recorded, in which thousands of people took to the streets due to shortages of food and medicine, inflation and insecurity.
The demonstrations were exacerbated by the suspension of a recall referendum against the president.
Venezuela’s appeal
Last year, the Maduro government appealed a ruling in favor of resuming the investigation, arguing that it should be respected. the principle of complementarityaccording to which an international court complements national justice and can only intervene if a country is not already investigating the same crimes, the Reuters agency explained.
However, the appeal judges unanimously rejected all the appeal allegations and gave the green light to the ICC Prosecutor’s Office to resume investigations into the abuses.
In reaction to the ruling, the Venezuelan government said in a statement that it “disagreed” with the decision, which “responds to the intention to exploit international criminal justice mechanisms for political purposes, all on the basis of an accusation for alleged crimes against humanity that have never occurred.”
“This entire maneuver has been built from the manipulation of a small set of crimes,” the note adds.
Maduro’s government accuses the opposition of manipulating some cases of alleged human rights violations. He assures that he is already investigating the complaints and maintains that no crimes against humanity have occurred on a large scale.
In 2020, Khan said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that government and military officials had carried out forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and torture to dissidents during the 2017 protests, in which 125 people died.
The decision of the ICC Appeals Chamber was applauded by human rights organizations in Venezuela, amid protests to demand the release of the activist. Rocío San Miguelwho was detained on February 9 without the authorities giving news about her whereabouts for several days or allowing her access to her family or lawyers.
San Miguel was accused of participating in an alleged conspiracy to assassinate Maduro and remains detained in El Helicoide, which has been denounced by dissidents as “the largest torture center in Venezuela.”
The arrest of San Miguel was described as a enforced disappearance by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rightsa statement that unleashed the fury of Maduro, who ordered the expulsion of all the personnel of this instance in Venezuela.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, a UN mechanism with a separate mandate from the High Commissioner’s office, has investigated and documented cases of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and other cruel, inhuman treatment or degrading acts committed since 2014.
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