TSJ ordered the Court of Apure to pass sentence for the Amparo Massacre

The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the Apure Court of Appeals to issue a sentence in relation to the events that occurred on October 29, 1998 in Caño Las Coloradas, José Antonio Páez municipality (Apure), where 14 fishermen died known fact like the Amparo Massacre.

Such decision is contained in sentence No. 208 drafted by Judge Maikel Moreno where the conflict raised between the Martial Court and the Court of Appeals of Apure is resolved.

Both instances had declared themselves incompetent to issue a new sentence in relation to the so-called Amparo Massacre, for which 15 people are being prosecuted: three soldiers, six officials from the former Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (Disip) and six agents of the former Judicial Technical Police (PTJ).

These people, members of the dismissed José Antonio Páez Specific Command, were acquitted on June 30, 1988 by the Martial Court “because… they acted in the legitimate exercise of an authority or position and in defense of their persons, circumstances that exempt them from punishment” , at the discretion of that instance.

The revision

Eighteen years after that decision, the Public Ministry asked the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ to review the sentence that acquitted the actors in the Amparo Massacre, alleging irregularities in the processing of that criminal proceeding.

In response to that request, the Constitutional Chamber made a decision on October 28, 2016 annulling the sentence that acquitted the military and security agency officials prosecuted for the death with firearms of the 14 fishermen. In that same decision, the Constitutional Chamber ordered the Martial Court to issue a new sentence.

The following year, that is, on June 14, 2017, the Martial Court declared itself incompetent to comply with the order from the Constitutional Chamber because the crimes charged to the 15 defendants “are of a non-military nature… they constitute crimes of a common nature that can be prosecuted. and punishable by ordinary criminal jurisdiction.

This argument was reinforced with the reform of the Organic Code of Military Justice of the year 2021, which orders the referral to the ordinary courts of all the processes followed against civilians.

With this reasoning, the Court Martial declined the matter in the Apure Court of Appeals. But that instance also declared itself incompetent to pass sentence against the accused civilians and soldiers. To do this, he used a criterion of the Criminal Chamber according to which “judicial competence tends to be perpetuated until the conclusion of the process, despite the legal reforms that could arise during the course of it.”

The magistrates of the Criminal Chamber analyzed all the edges of that conflict and concluded that even though the military criminal jurisdiction from the beginning of the process against the accused assumed jurisdiction, two different legal mandates ensued, due to the reforms of the year 2021 to which Codes of Military Justice and Criminal Procedure.

The first of these mandates expressly prohibits the trial of civilians before the military jurisdiction, and the second that formally attributes to the military courts the knowledge of the processes followed for military crimes only.

On this last point, the Criminal Chamber warns that “the trial of civilians before the military jurisdiction is a clear violation of international standards relating to Human Rights.”