Thursday, March 28

The trial against the opposition journalist imprisoned a year and a half ago begins in Venezuela


Correspondent in Caracas

Updated:

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Yesterday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. on a rainy Monday, the Venezuelan journalist Roland Carreno He was finally able to appear on the street to attend the presentation hearing in the Caracas courts, after spending a year and a half in jail, waiting for the start of his trial in the shadowy secret police of Sebín.

At the headquarters of Sebín (Bolivarian National Intelligence Service), located in the Helicoide pyramidal building in Caracas, he also former editor of the magazine ‘Hola’ of Venezuelacounted the 561 days, one by one, that he has been locked up in prison, whose unsanitary and overcrowded conditions have undermined his already precarious health.

Roland Carreño has not allowed himself to be defeated by the long wait to be brought to court and the prison isolation with which Nicolás Maduro’s regime has punished him to break his morale while imposing charges on him for the alleged “financing of terrorism, conspiracy against the political form, illicit trafficking in weapons of war and association to commit crimes.

On the first day of the oral trial, held this Monday, Carreño spoke about his professional career and his performance as host of the Globovisión television program ‘Buenas Noches’, on the social pages of ‘El Nacional’ and editor of ‘Blitz’ magazine. , and was firm and strong about his moral strength in defense of the freedom of Venezuela.

Oppositionist Carreño, also a member of the Voluntad Popular (VP) leadership, the party founded by Leopold Lopezwas arrested on October 26, 2020 along with the activists Yefferson Sarcos and Elias Rodriguez (later released) and sanctioned for his proximity to the interim president Juan Guaidó and the founder of VP.

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Joel García, the journalist’s defense attorney, believes that the Maduro regime is playing “procedural delay” with blackmail, psychological and physical torture, and violation of due process. There is more of 240 political prisoners in the country who have not been tried, and the few who have a release ticket are not released either.

In his conversation with ABC, lawyer García assured that Roland Carreño “spoke of his impeccable career as a journalist and pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. They will have to acquit him and release him », he affirmed when commenting that of the« 20 allegations presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, 19 are from policemen ».

The lawyer pointed out that Carreño is the victim of a 2008 criminal action and procedure law that is controlled by the security and police forces and not by the Public Ministry, where the Prosecutor’s Office finds itself with its hands tied.

Kidnapped by the dictatorship

Ana Eleanor Acosta, a lawyer for the defense team, stated that despite Carreño’s moral strength, “the overcrowding conditions in the Sebin prison have worsened his precarious health condition. She suffers from diabetes, hypertension, which causes labyrinthitis. She needs medical care and she doesn’t have it.”

According to the statement from the Interim Presidency of Venezuela, the president in charge of the Republic, Juan Guaidó, accused “the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro of maintaining a policy of terror in which political prisoners are the hostages in a justice system completely biased.

“The reality is that Roland Carreño is kidnapped by the dictatorship to generate fear and exercise state terror,” the head of state stated in a message posted on his social networks.

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The continuation of the trial will be next Tuesday the 17th, and if there is no greater “procedural delay” the defense maintains that Roland Carreño should be acquitted in theory.

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