Claims of police abuses are paid dearly in Venezuela

[ChangoLoa]

Pain and tragedy visited again the Barrios family. Last Saturday, May 28, Juan José, 28, became the seventh member of the family born in central Aragua state who has been killed in almost 13 years. The Human Rights Commission for Justice and Peace in Aragua State related in a press release that the victim was intercepted by two hooded men after Juan dropped his wife in an outpatient treatment center.

The Barrios' ordeal began in 1998, when they denounced that alleged Aragua state police agents captured, without a bench warrant, Benito Barrios. Some hours later, he was found dead.

Requests for justice administration and complaints filed by the family at domestic and foreign bodies have made them the suspects' target. Since then, Benito's nephews Rigoberto and Wilmer José Flores, his cousin Oscar and his brothers Narciso and Luis have been also killed by presumed police agents. Still another nephew was seriously injured in an assassination attempt this year.

For the Committee of Relatives of the Victims of the Events of February and March 1989 (Cofavic), an NGO that has assisted the Barrios family in lodging the complaint in the IACHR Court, the latest event proves that impunity helps spread violence and crime.

~~~~

According to the human rights activist (L. Ortega, director of Cofavic), the latest murder, that of Juan José Barrios, attests to the contents of the report recently submitted, according to which the action of the so-called vigilante groups or death squads has spread over the country due to the lack of sanctions by the competent authorities.

The paper quotes data contained in the progress report of the Attorney General Office of 2010, whereby Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz acknowledged that out of 9,131 events of police abuse reported last year only 266 (2.91 percent) were brought to a judge.


http://english.eluniversal.com/2011/06/04/claims-of-police-abuses-are-paid-dearly-in-venezuela.shtml