AREQUIPA, Peru – Maria Corina Machado and other opposition figures in Venezuela could face charges of alleged homicide for deaths that occurred during protests following the July 28 election.
This was suggested on Monday by Venezuela’s Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, an authority of the Chavista regime who has acknowledged to date 25 fatalities in the demonstrations, attributed to supporters of the opposition.
According to Saab, the protests that followed the ruling National Electoral Council (CNE) declaring Nicolas Maduro the winner of the elections suggest they were planned by an “extreme right” group under the direction of Machado.
Regarding the possible accusation of homicide against the opposition leader, the attorney general told the official media Últimas Noticias that this could happen at “any time.”
“Both she and any other person involved, including opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, could be considered the intellectual authors of such violence,” Saab said.
The veiled threats against María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia occur two weeks after the Attorney General himself announced the opening of a criminal investigation against both leaders, for alleged “incitement to insurrection,” after the two opponents called on the police and military to stop the “repression” of the protests.
On July 29, the CNE controlled by the Maduro dictatorship, credited the dictator with 51.95% of the votes in the previous elections, while Edmundo García received only 43.18%.
The opposition, which has managed to gather 81% of the voting records, currently public on a website for review by citizens and independent bodies, claims that García easily surpassed Maduro by almost 40% of the votes.
Despite the regime’s repression and intimidation, thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets last Saturday across the country and in 365 cities around the world to express their support for the opposition and against Nicolás Maduro’s electoral fraud.
On Francisco de Miranda Avenue in downtown Caracas, María Corina Machado addressed a crowd and assured them that they will not leave the streets: “We will do it with resilience, with prudence, with intelligence!”
For its part, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved this Friday, by consensus, a resolution that requires the National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) to publish “expeditiously” the minutes of the scrutiny of the presidential elections of July 28, broken down.
The resolution, promoted by the United States Government and supported by Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Suriname and Uruguay, as co-sponsors, also calls on the CNE to respect “the fundamental principle of popular sovereignty through an impartial verification of the results that guarantees the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the electoral process,” according to Infobae.
