The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice dismissed three appeals that sought to annul the 30-year prison sentence imposed on 10 people accused of participating in various plans aimed at the assassination of President Nicolás Maduro. Consequently, these sentences remained unscathed.
Such decision is contained in ruling No. 608, written by Judge Elsa Gómez and validated by her colleagues from the Criminal Chamber, Carmen Marisela Castro and Maikel Moreno. The investigation of the events began on November 11, 2019 by the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, whose agents detected the existence of a plan to attract and recruit police and military personnel “in order to articulate activities aimed at altering internal order, within the framework of destabilizing activities carried out against the government and its institutions.”
The actions were called by their brains as Venezuela Honor and Glory 2019, whose participants communicated through WhatsApp.
The plan contemplated seven specific objectives: an attempt on the life of President Nicolás Maduro; form a civil association façade to be used as the main source of financing; operations within the national territory that generate psychological and physical impacts on State institutions; carry out activities called True Strikes, which cause an impact on the Venezuelan people; political, selective assassinations; acts that promote the incitement to rebellion of the members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces as well as the attack and sabotage of military units and weapons systems.
Objective number 7 raised in that year 2019 was “support for a foreign military invasion against national sovereignty.” The security agencies dismantled these plans with the identification of 31 people involved in them. Of those thirty, 14 were arrested and charged for the alleged commission of the crimes of terrorism, conspiracy and association to commit a crime.
Until now, 10 of that group of 14 were brought to trial, which took place between May 22, 2022 and March 18, 2024 before the First Trial Court to hear cases related to terrorism, which sentenced them to the maximum penalty.
This group of those sentenced to 30 years in prison are: Luis Eduardo Lira Cupare, Jesús Antonio Castro Gómez, José Miguel Yeguez, Sixto José Salamanca Jiménez, Juan Carlos Macualo Orozco, Víctor Ignacio Rodríguez Romero (1st Sergeant), César David Mayora Guacare, as well as the three police officers from the state of Sucre Marco de Jesús Fuentes González, Alexis Rafael Jiménez and Deivis Malavé Ruiz.
The sentences were appealed before the Criminal Chamber through three appeals that were dismissed by the magistrates, because they sought to review what happened in the trial, an aspect that the highest court is not allowed to address.
