The Attorney General of Venezuela, Reynaldo Muñoz, warned that President Nicolás Maduro has immunity as a figure that protects him against attempts to try him inside or outside Venezuela.
“This immunity is to prevent this international order from deteriorating,” stated the Attorney General during his participation in the Meeting of the Network of Jurists for the Liberation of President Nicolás Maduro and the First Lady Cilia Floresheld this Friday at the Teresa Carreño Theater.
Muñoz recalled that immunity for people who hold high positions is recognized by the Vienna Convention and the International Court of Justice, among other international treaties.
“The immunity of a head of state is absolute and does not depend on the recognition that other leaders have as President,” indicated the Attorney General of the Republic. “The United States does not have the authority to violate the immunity of the Venezuelan head of state,” stressed Muñoz, who said that “there is no international norm that authorizes the United States to detain and detain President Maduro.”
The Attorney General said that the current United States administration “dynamited all the bases of international law,” following a series of actions initiated in 2002 to attempt “regime change” in Venezuela. “They are imposing a new form of colonization on the country,” Muñoz said to conclude his speech.
The event that brought together a large group of Venezuelan lawyers was held at the Teresa Carreño Theater and was hosted by Foreign Minister Yván Gil, who highlighted that we are facing the dilemma of “the law of the strongest or dialogue.” In the middle of the event, Congressman Nicolás Maduro Guerra and two children of the first lady Cilia Flores appeared.
The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, made an emotional intervention to praise the fallen in the early hours of January 3, when US military forces broke into Venezuelan territory and forcibly took away the head of state Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. “They were serial, massive murders, identical to those of the 60s,” he said.
“We have to be clear about the historical moment we are seeing: a turning point, a new era,” said Saab. “In international human rights law, when some states sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that recognizes the sovereignty of peoples: that was pulverized on January 3,” said the Attorney General.
Silio Sánchez, vice-rector of Territorial Development of the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, also spoke, indicating that currently “there is no place for fracture.”
Lawyer Indiana Parada, professor at the University of Táchira, described the event of last January 3 as “an act of aggression, a war crime.”
During the event, several statements from social movements were read demanding the release of President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, held in a United States prison. Gisela Jiménez Aranguren read a document signed by the Venezuelan Association of Jurists supporting the constitutional order. Wilmer Marcano Rojas, from the Movement of Jurists and Internationalists of Peace Diplomacy, recalled that “our region was declared a peace zone in 2014.” A similar reminder was given by Marieta Henríquez Rivas, a professor at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.
