For the commission of the crime of qualified homicide with premeditation and treachery, for futile and ignoble reasons, in a degree of complicity, the former disip Berman José Vega was sentenced to 17 years and 4 months in prison.
Berman Vega had been detained since December 2023 for his responsibility in the Yumare Massacre, in which nine leftist social leaders lost their lives in an execution and extermination operation carried out on May 8, 1986 in the La Vaca village, state. Yaracuy.
Lawyer Víctor López, legal representative of the victims of the Yumare Massacre, reported that the hearing of conclusions took place on the afternoon of this Monday, October 21, in the Criminal Judicial Circuit of the state of Aragua, in the city of Maracay, until where relatives of the victims and survivors of the Yumare Massacre attended.
During the hearing, the lawyers in the case presented to the judge the political and legal arguments of the case, supported by the Law for Justice and Against Impunity approved in 2011, after evaluating all the evidence such as the result of exhumations and projectile trajectories.
“Today our legal representation exposed how systematically between 1958 and 1998 the Disip, within the framework of State terrorism existing in the Fourth Republic, perpetrated the event known as the Yumare Massacre,” commented lawyer Víctor López to Latest News.
For her part, Natali Castellanos, daughter of Nelson Martín Castellano Díaz, murdered during the massacre, highlighted that this is an act of justice 38 years after the massacre perpetrated during the Fourth Republic, under the government of Jaime Lusinchi, when her father and eight other victims were detained, tortured and later executed.
Two of those responsible have already been sentenced in the case, retired Army General Alexis Sánchez Paz, sentenced to 13 years in prison, and Ramón Celestino Rojas to 16 years.
Henry López Sisco is the main one, he is in Costa Rica despite the fact that there is an arrest warrant against him, as well as against 40 other officials, including former commissioner Oswaldo Ramos Oviedo and the brothers Alirio and Norberto Rebanales, all from the Dissip. This is the first massacre in Venezuela in which a conviction was achieved in court.
During the Yumare Massacre, the following were extrajudicially executed: Rafael Ramón Quevedo Infante, Ronald José Morao Salgado, Nelson Martín Castellano Díaz, Dilia Antonia Rojas, Luis Rafael Guzmán Green, José Rosendo Silva Medina, Pedro Pablo Jimenes García, Simón José Romero Madriz and Alfredo Caicedo Castle.
Although the police authorities of the time indicated that it was an armed confrontation between the Disip and a guerrilla group, witnesses and relatives of the victims stated that it was a group of social fighters and promoters of the Bolivarian ideal, who were detained, tortured and, after being executed, they were placed in military clothing on top of their civilian clothing.
