As many readers are aware, late last week the Venezuelan Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni ordered the conditional release of Eligio Cedeño to stand trial in freedom. Immediately afterward she was unjustly arrested, and attacked on live television by President Hugo Chavez, who called for the maximum penalty of 30 years be applied against her - a very abnormal and outrageous action for a president to take against the presumed innocence of a citizen. What has not been made public until now, was that during the hearing in which Judge Afiuni delivered her decision, she was provided with an opinion by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations, which declared that Cedeño's incarceration was unlawful. See below the latest press release detailing the events.
Judge's Decision to Release Eligio Cedeño Based on Opinion of United Nations Working Group
Jailing of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni Shows Lack of Judicial Independence, says Lawyer
CARACAS, Dec. 15, 2009 - On Thursday, Dec. 10, the Venezuelan political prisoner Eligio Cedeño was conditionally released following an order issued by Judge María Lourdes Afiuni. Within minutes of granting Cedeño's conditional release, Judge Afiuni was arrested by officers from Venezuela's intelligence police (DISIP), the ruling was reversed by another judge of the same court, and a new arrest warrant was issued for Cedeño.
Defense lawyers present at the hearing have affirmed that Judge
Afiuni's decision was based primarily on an Opinion adopted on
September 1, 2009 by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The
Opinion states that, "The deprivation of freedom of Mr. Eligio Cedeño
is arbitrary, since it violates the provisions of articles 9, 10 and 11
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 9, 10 and 14 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." The U.N. Working
Group transmitted its detailed Opinion on the Cedeño case to the
Government of Venezuela earlier this year, and requested that Cedeño be
granted "provisional freedom until the end of the trial." The court was
never informed of the U.N. Working Group's Opinion through Venezuelan
government channels. The document was provided to Judge Afiuni only by
Cedeño's defense counsel, for the preliminary hearing.
"There was a time that judges who failed to follow Chávez's
instructions risked being removed from the bench," noted London-based
attorney Robert Amsterdam, one of Cedeño's lawyers. "With the arrest of
Judge Afiuni last week, Chávez wrote an obituary for freedom in
Venezuela. Judicial independence had been on life support but, sadly,
it is now officially dead."
The day after Judge Afiuni's arrest, President Hugo Chávez appeared on
national television to denounce Judge Afiuni as a crook ("bandida"),
claiming that her decision had been pre-arranged with Cedeño's lawyers.
President Chávez also instructed the Attorney General, the President of
the Supreme Court and the members of the Legislature to ensure that
Judge Afiuni is convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The next day, Judge Afiuni - who had been assigned at random to manage
the proceedings in Cedeño's case - was indicted on charges of
corruption, accessory to an escape, criminal conspiracy and abuse of
power. She was transferred to a severely overcrowded women's prison
outside of Caracas (Instituto Nacional de Orientación Femenina "INOF"),
where she is believed to be among the general prison population, some
members of which she herself may have sentenced. Further, Judge Afiuni
has been denied the right to a public defender.
The military police have also detained the Cedeño defense lawyer José Rafael Parra Soluzzo, and have held him under arrest without charges at the military intelligence headquarters (DIM). The arrests of Afiuni and Parra have provoked public outrage: the Caracas College of Lawyers has published a statement condemning both unlawful detentions, and demanding immediate release.
Cedeño had been held for more than 34 months without a trial in the DISIP headquarters in connection with his alleged participation in an improper currency exchange transaction. The applicable law, however, permits no more than two years of pretrial detention. At the Dec. 10 hearing, prosecutors failed to attend court for the second time in one week, and defense counsel applied for conditional release as allowed under Article 264 of Venezuela's Code of Criminal Procedure. Judge Afiuni's decision to release Cedeño was expressly authorized in Article 264, which requires control judges to review periodically all pretrial preventive measures and grants judges complete discretion to modify pretrial detention for less stringent measures.
More information on the Eligio Cedeño case can be found on www.eligiocedeno.com and www.robertamsterdam.com.
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