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LATIN AMERICA |
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VENEZUELA
Venezuela Asks Interpol to Arrest Former
President
Caracas – Venezuela asked Interpol to arrest
former President Carlos Andres Perez in
connection with deaths caused by the
security forces during a 1989 uprising in
Caracas, Attorney General Luisa Ortega said.
The arrest warrant “is included in
Interpol’s code red, but that is not a
guarantee that he is going to be captured.
That depends on the government of the
country where he is at this time,” believed
to be Costa Rica, she said Tuesday night on
state television.
The AG’s office started the process Sept. 20
of exhuming the remains of an undetermined
number of people at the Caracas general
cemetery in an effort to identify them and
close one of the darkest chapters in what is
known as the “Caracazo.”
The bodies are those of people killed by the
security forces during an uprising in late
February 1989, a few days after Perez took
office for the second time and promptly
imposed a harsh austerity program.
Perez served as Venezuela’s president from
1974-1979 and 1989-1993.
The exact number of people killed was never
determined, with the government listing the
death toll at 300 and human rights groups
putting the figure at more than 1,000.
Most of those killed in the disturbances
were buried in mass graves in one part of
the general cemetery.
“We have to do justice in all the cases,
none can be left open,” Ortega said, noting
that charges have so far been brought
against three people, including then-Defense
Minister Italo Del Valle Alliegro.
The others accused of the killings are
Freddy Maya and Manuel Heinz, regional
commanders of the National Guard,
Venezuela’s national militarized police.
In April 2007, Perez, now 87, expressed a
desire “to want to return to the country,”
Henry Ramos Allup, chairman of the former
president’s Accion Democratica party, said.
Ramos Allup said Perez was living in Miami
and would be inclined to come home if the
courts would allow him to remain free on
bail pending trial on corruption charges.
The most recent statements to the Venezuelan
press by Perez, who is apparently unable to
talk in the wake of a series of health
problems, came in May 2007, when he called
for “greater international pressure” on
President Hugo Chavez.
Perez had said in July 2004 that Chavez
should “die like a dog.”
As an army lieutenant colonel, Chavez led a
failed February 1992 coup against Perez, who
was deeply unpopular for the austerity
policies he imposed at the behest of the
International Monetary Fund.
Perez, then in his second term as president
after heading the government at the height
of Venezuela’s 1970s oil boom, followed IMF
prescriptions to deal with the problems
created, at least in part, by his own
earlier free-spending ways.
He was removed by Congress from the
presidency for corruption in 1993 and later
sentenced to two years in prison for
diversion of public funds.
In 1998, he was imprisoned again on other
corruption charges. Perez regained his
freedom when he was elected to the Senate
that same year, but he spent only a short
time in Venezuela before going into
self-exile to avoid further prosecution.
Perez has homes in the Dominican Republic
and the United States. EFE |
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