Three accused for the explosion of drones loaded with explosives in an act of the president Nicolas Maduro in 2018 they were sentenced to 30 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Venezuela, relatives of the convicted reported this Friday.
María Delgado Tabosky, retired Major Juan Carlos Marrufo and retired Colonel Juan Francisco Rodríguez were sentenced on charges of “terrorism, treason and criminal association” in a hearing that began Thursday night and lasted until dawn Friday, a family source told AFP who asked not to be named.
María Delgado Tabosky, 48 years old and a Venezuelan-Spanish national, is the sister of Osman Delgado Tabosky, who lives in the United States, accused by the Maduro government of having financed an attack with two drones that exploded near a stage in in which the president presided over an act with the military, on August 4, 2018, in Caracas.
Marrufo, 52 and with dual Venezuelan and Italian nationality, is her husband.
“They were never related to the events. They were simply detained for being relatives of a person presumably linked,” the source said.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Human Rights Council estimated that the detentions of Delgado Tabosky and Marrufo, in 2019, were “arbitrary”. Both have been imprisoned for three years and eight months and are being held at the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) in Caracas.
Their relatives ask for a house in jail for health reasons and have unsuccessfully asked the governments of Spain and Italy to intercede for the couple.
Another 17 defendants in the case, including former opposition deputy Juan Requesens, were sentenced last August to between five and 30 years in prison.
