The following is a translation of an article about Eligio Cedeño and Robert Amsterdam published in the French newspaper L'Express.
'The prisoners of Chavez'
L'Express, June 18, 2009
In the hope of educating the international community about the fact that political prisoners exist in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez, the former putchist colonel who became president, a group of Venezuelan and international lawyers are ready to launch their campaign on the subject. Their white paper, coming out later this June, focuses on the symbolic case of Eligio Cedeño, 44-year-old banker close to the opposition, imprisoned for 2 years and 4 months. They emphasize the fact that, at the beginning of 2009, the judges called a halt to his trial at the moment when it became all too clear that there was a lack of evidence against him. His trial was adjourned sine die. Even though the banker's time in prison is well past the legal period of provisional detention, he is still behind bars. "The system of justice is used for purposes of political persecution ", denounce the authors of the white paper, including Robert Amsterdam. The latter is none other than the Canadian business lawyer who, since 2003, has defended the former president of Russian oil group Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned in Siberia. According to the team of Robert Amsterdam, nearly 50 supporters of the opposition are being wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela.
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