Venezuela urged to release judge held without trial for a year

[spanza]

Source: Amnesty International

Amnesty International has urged the Venezuelan authorities to release a judge held for over a year without trial for provisionally releasing a banker accused of corruption.

Judge María Lourdes Afiuni Mora was arrested on 10 December 2009, hours after she ordered the release of banker Eligio Cedeño, a decision that was within her power and consistent with Venezuelan law.

A day after her arrest, the judge's decision was condemned by President Hugo Chávez during a television interview in which he called for her to serve the maximum sentence of 30 years.

Held at Los Teques women's prison, outside the capital, Caracas, Judge Afiuni is reported to be in urgent need of medical treatment and has received threats from fellow inmates she has convicted and sentenced. No official investigations have been launched into the threats.


Read more: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/venezuela-urged-release-judge-held-without-trial-year-2011-01-26

[UTUSN]

1. K&R #3. Brave, brave posting, O.P.!1 n/t

[msanthrope]

5. No kidding!!! n/t

[Broderick]

2. Chavez

can do no wrong.

[joshcryer]

3. This is what decree powers give you.

You can have someone locked up for eternity if you want. It's efficient, I'll give 'em that.

[dipsydoodle]

32. Your own Presidents have the same power

You refer to them as signing statements.

[joshcryer]

38. Wrong. Signing statements hold little weight.

[dipsydoodle]

46. Oh

During the administration of President George W. Bush, there was a controversy over the President's use of signing statements, which critics charged was unusually extensive and modified the meaning of statutes. The practice predates the Bush administration, however, and has since been continued by the Obama administration.<1> In July 2006, a task force of the American Bar Association stated that the use of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted laws serves to "undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers".<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_statement

[joshcryer]

47. Read the entire article, please.

Wiki agrees with me.

[COLGATE4]

4. Yeah, what the hell was that judge thinking when she thought

she should follow the law?? :sarcasm:

[msanthrope]

6. Welcome to DU and the case of Judge Afiuni is a great example of Chavez's abuse of power.

Judge Afiuni's decision to release Cedeno was the correct way to go....

[Joanne98]

7. Give him a trial, convict him, and throw him back in jail!

[msanthrope]

8. Who? Judge Afiuni is a woman.

Cedeno was in jail under Chavez for 3 years. No trial.

[joshcryer]

11. What law did Afiuni violate?

[msanthrope]

20. None. But's she going to die in prison (tumors in her breast, etc...) n/t

[FLPanhandle]

9. The Chavez worshipers will be here soon with their standard response.

"Don't trust the source, it's all capitalist propaganda!" (I'm looking forward to them trying to discredit amnesty international)

[nyy1998]

10. +1 nt

[joshcryer]

12. I can't wait for the day Venezuela follows Tunsinia and Egypt.

[dipsydoodle]

31. They did that years ago

to put Chavez into power. Maybe it time for you to just deal with it.

[joshcryer]

39. Chavez formed a coup, had popular support, and finally got elected.

Otherwise Chavez appears to be heading in the same direction the Tunsinian and Egyptian dictators did.

Give it time.

[U4ikLefty]

13. That's barbaric....we would NEVER hold someone for over a year without trial!!!

:sarcasm:

[Broderick]

14. Now wait a Goll Darn Minute

This is Chavez we are talking about. He can do no wrong. He parts water.

[U4ikLefty]

15. He's doing all he can with a conservative Congress

oh wait, that's someone else who is holding people for years without trial.

pot meet kettle

[Broderick]

16. LOVE it

SO right. I bought into the Gitmo closing rhetoric.... Hook, Line, and Sinker.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

18. Far be it for me to defend Gitmo, I won't

There is an honest debate as to whether persons captured on a foreign field of battle can be detained indefinitely. I'm a'gin it because the suspects are so few and the charges so specififc we should be able to process them unlike something like WW2 where POWs were captured by the tens of thousands.

But this seems a whole other order of magnitude.

This is a judge who followed the law.

This would be akin to a judge releasing a suspect on bond after being arrested by Bush's DoJ and then Bush ordering the judge arrested and held.

Not the same as a foreign combatant or terror suspect.

[joshcryer]

42. The key here being that Bush could not magically order a judge to be arrested and held.

Chavez, with decree powers, can simply say so, and it is done.

Bush or any President for that matter would have to take it up with the DA, spend days talking to lawyers about whether or not they had a case, dig deep to see if there was anything to be had.

Look at Assange. You know damn well the US wanted to eat Assange alive, if they could. They did discovery and found that nothing could be done, so, moral desires, emotional desires, they fell the way side to justice.

[Joanne98]

37. LOL

[sabrina 1]

17. Omg! Omg! Report this to the US State Dept.!!!

A person may be being held unjustly in Venezuela, and they haven't been tortured yet?? Cheney will be furious.

Obama's order to continue the indefinite detention of people without trial shows that Obama is a far stronger leader than Chavez. Chavez is not preventing this woman from seeing lawyers? From access to the judicial system? There is no assassination decree from Venezuela's president yet? What a weakling.



If the woman is being held unjustly, and if she is the only person in Venezuela being held unjustly, I'm not sure why a single act of injustice is major news to a country that isn't happy unless they are holding tens of thousands of people unjustly.

I have no information on this case, but will look at Veneuzuela's own news sources before deciding what this is about and if she is being held wrongfully, then I hope she is released.

Then, maybe Americans could demand that Obama lift the order to assassinate without trial or conviction, a U.S. citizen??? We have a lot of dirt in our back yard and a president only too willing to order such things as unlimited detention without trial AND extra-judicial assassinations right here in the U.S.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

19. So you'd be OK with US presidents locking up US judges by decree

got it

[sabrina 1]

27. So, you're okay with the U.S. ordering the assassination of U.S.

citizens without trial or conviction. Got it.

See? We can all play that game. The weekly anti-Chavez propaganda got old a long time ago here.

In every country when you are looking for something negative, you can find it. If this is all the enemies of Venezuelan democracy can find, I am not too worried about the country, even if it doesn't have the usual MSM negative spin.

This, the U.S. is the country I am worried about. Where innocent people are ordered to be detained indefinitely by the POTUS, this POTUS, not Bush this time. And where those who were tortured and abused and held for years without trial or charges, cannot get any justice, not even an apology because this DOJ fights every effort to do so.

A country that has War Criminals walking around freely, still profiting from their crimes, worries me far more than anything I have read about Venezuela frankly.

If the woman is wrongfully accused, she will have a trial and I hope she is vindicated. I live here, I am amazed that anyone from this country has the gall to point fingers anywhere else. We do not have the moral authority to do so anymore.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

28. I dunno.

If an American of German descent fled to North Africa to join Rommel would the US be law-bound to arrest him or just continue on-going combat operations?

This is apples and oranges.

The conduct of wartime operations can be debated and that debate is happening.

Chavez, not in time of war and with a person in no way involved in acts of war, unilaterally locked away the judge over a matter of civil law.

The US Congress, for good or for ill, wrote rules and the US judiciary, for good or for ill, has heard cases, i.e. Hamdi v Rumsfeld.

Show me that much oversight and jurispridence in the OP.

You can't because a banker was held for 3 years!

Name ANY civil offense where suspects and the judges that oversee the case have been imprisoned by executive order in the US.

If Bush is dog shit then Chavez is lower than dog shit.

And spare me the war criminal talk.

As soon as the R candidate is announced for the 2012 ballot you'll be voting for your "war criminal" to stay in office lest the evil R tinker with your SS or HCR. You'll happily let Obama smoke Awlaki even if he were sitting in the middle of a kindergarten class so long as your benefits remain intact and the higher tax brackets hit someone other than you.

Obama is NOT a war criminal and this is just so much psuedo-moral puffery.

[joeglow3]

50. I don't buy that bullshit you are selling

Basically, you say I cannot condemn a TERRIBLE act of corruption because similar things happen elsewhere. That is a response I would expect from my 5 & 8 year olds. It is quite possible for me to condemn BOTH actions.

[msanthrope]

21. So you'd be okay if Obama imprisoned a judge who frees Bradley Manning from pre-trial detention?

Because that's what happened here....the judge released someone who had been in pre-trial detention for 3 years.

So Chavez had her arrested. Then he went on his TV station the next day and said she deserved 30 years in prison.

At least Manning starts hearings in February....

[Broderick]

22. Come on that is a silly analogy ya know

Chavez can do no wrong, whereas anything American is wrong. Apples and oranges. Strawman. Nonsequitor.

[msanthrope]

23. I forgot that left-leaning dictators are given the hypocrisy pass--they 'need' to

oppress, after all.

[Broderick]

24. Robert Mugabe

All in the vein of fairness ya see.

[msanthrope]

25. You're right--we have those apologists, too. n/t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

26. You left out

LOL

[sabrina 1]

30. Eh, no that's not what I said, in fact I don't think I said

ever, that Chavez could do no wrong. All human beings can and do, do wrong.

What I am amused by is Americans pointing fingers at the 'wrongs' being done by other leaders, while we continue to commit war crimes, to hold innocent in our gulags, completely oblivious to the way the rest of the world now sees us. And how they watch in awe, as we still act as though we are the moral arbiters of the world.

Let Venezuelans deal with their problems. We have more than enough to keep us busy here, and we just look foolish when we stand on our moral soapboxes pointing at other countries yelling 'he's doing something wrong'!

Amusing is probably the best and kindest word for it.

[Broderick]

33. I chuckle for you then.

peace

[joshcryer]

40. Um, no one is interfereing with Venezuela here, this is a forum.

I know that you feel that any criticism for Venezuela is an "attack" on Venezuela, but that is far from the truth. Criticism of dictators should not be light.

[Akoto]

29. Don't understand why people are comparing the US and Venezuela. Both are in the wrong here. n/t

[NYC Liberal]

35. Don't get it either.

Why is it that when Chavez does something wrong, inevitably there are sarcastic responses of "The US would NEVER do that!"

Nobody here supports the torture done by the US or the invasion of Iraq, or abuses of power by American politicians. If we were right-wing Republicans who loved Bush and supported torture then we'd be hypocritical.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

36. It kind of has the air of

a German who is so ashamed of WW2 they condone gassing civilians lest they be thought a hypocrite.

[joshcryer]

41. Exactly!

[ronnie624]

43. Most of those here have supported torture and invasion with their tax dollars and their complacency.

Venezuela, even under the most thuggish dictator, has never committed crimes on the scale of the invasion of Iraq or the saturation bombings of Indochina. Any U.S. American who criticizes the Venezuelan government, for any reason, is demonstrating unparalleled hypocrisy.

[Psephos]

44. You forgot the sarcasm thingy. n/t

[ronnie624]

45. Thanks for the reminder. n/t

[NYC Liberal]

48. Everyone here, except trolls and disrupters,

is against torture and abuse of power. Those who also oppose it in Venezuela are being consistent. Paying taxes is not a choice, and we do not choose how our tax dollars are spent beyond voting for Congressional representation every 2 years and the president every four. On top of that, refusing to pay taxes because of certain policies means that you are also not supporting all of the various social programs that are desperately needed by millions of people.

"But the US did it too" would be a good argument against right-wingers who actively supported Bush's abuses of power yet criticize Chavez's. It's not a good argument against those who have spoken out against BOTH Bush AND Chavez.

The only people "demonstrating unparalleled hypocrisy" are the ones who oppose Bush yet support Chavez.

[ronnie624]

49. Comparing the Bush administration to the government in Venezuela

is nonsensical in the extreme. You are attempting to equate the jailing of a judge to the wholesale destruction of civil society and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in another country through aggressive war. It is absolutely impossible for me to take such a thing seriously. There is no basis for rational discussion.

You may not wish to be responsible for your government's conduct, but you are, even when you believe there is nothing you can do about it.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

51. Iraq was a civil society?

And all this time I thought I opposed the war because wars are destructive.

I never knew Iraq was civil and politically governed.

Golly, you learn something new every day.

[ronnie624]

52. Civil society

simply refers to the collective of institutions and bodies--government, corporations and the Church, as examples--that establish a society. There is no value judgment inherent to the term.

If that is new to you, then you have a lot of reading to do.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

53. If the term is judgment neural then why the moral outrage simply because

a civil society was destroyed?

The society has to have value.

The Nazis were a civil society. Pretty well-ordered too.

Yet, no one mourns the destruction of that society.

[ronnie624]

56. *

:crazy:

[bitchkitty]

58. LOL n/t

[NYC Liberal]

54. Comparing specific actions of the Bush admin to specific actions

of the Chavez admin is not nonsensical at all. It is possible to compare certain aspects of two things or people without saying "one is exactly the same as the other." To insist that everything must be compared in its entirety or not at all is ludicrous.

The only way in which I have any remote responsibility for what has been done is that I have paid taxes. Paying taxes is not a choice, and not just because refusing to do so can result in jail. Not paying taxes means I am also not paying my fair share for all of the social programs that so many people depend on to survive. I can't, in good conscience, not support those programs. Because it is my representatives in Congress, not I, who determine what my small share of the tax revenue is spent on, my only recourse is to vote. I have done so to elect people who are against what I am against.

[totodeinhere]

55. BS. In no way was I responsible for the abuses of the Bush Administration.

I did everything I could to fight the criminal activities of that administration. So as far as I am concerned I have the moral prerogative to also criticize Chavez.

[ttwiddler]

57. I'll bite

1. Unless you're writing from federal prison for failure to pay taxes as a protest, you're a hypocrite for calling anyone else a hypocrite.

2. Your claim that Venezuela "has never committed crimes on the scale of the invasion of Iraq or the saturation bombings of Indochina" is pointless. Of course, Venezuela has never done anything on such a SCALE. They don't have the ability. Do they have the ability to do things in kind, if not in degree? Absolutely.

3. The attempt to cut off debate by labeling any critic a hypocrite is a grade-school tactic. Accusing most of the people here of supporting torture and invasion with their tax dollars and their complacency is pretty cute, too. Since complacency on such an outspoken, and often mind-boggling forum, would never win by itself, it gets paired with tax dollars for maximum moral authority. If you plan on damning us all for the fact that some of the taxes we paid went to the military, it'd be nice if you also gave us pats on the back for the dollars that went to repairing the interstates. Or would that undercut the moral authority?

[DeSwiss]

34. K&R n/t