ALICIA DE LA ROSA | EL UNIVERSAL

Biagio Pilieri, asegura que la decisión de darle casa por cárcel, se tomó para “acabar con las manifestaciones de apoyo y solidaridad" del pueblo yaracuyano. “Me considero un secuestrado del Gobierno".

Caracas.- Para Biagio Pilieri, diputado electo a la Asamblea Nacional por el estado Yaracuy, el hecho de no otorgarle la libertad inmediata, tiene como objetivo "desconocer la inmunidad parlamentaria de los diputados que le son incómodos al Gobierno nacional". 

"Yo espero que la decisión de la Corte de Apelaciones de Yaracuy de pasar mi caso al Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ) sea una aberración y no un plan para usarnos de carnada a José Sánchez (Mazuco) y a mi persona para que no tengamos inmunidad. Si es un plan, significa que en tres meses el actual Parlamento puede hacer cualquier cosa para sacar a los nuevos diputados que le sean incómodos al Gobierno", dijo. 

En entrevista a El Universal, Pilieri aseguró ser un "secuestrado del Gobierno", porque "los cambios de sitio reclusión se le hacen a las personas cuando están procesadas o condenadas". 

"La justificación a este cambio de reclusión es que le soy incomodo al gobierno regional y que con ello van a terminar con las manifestaciones populares alrededor de la Comandancia y el Palacio de Gobierno. Estoy agradecido y profundamente conmovido por la muestra de apoyo, de respaldo", resaltó. 

Recordó que junto a sus tres compañeros, Mario Martínez, Jhon Pernía y Asdrúbal Lugo, fue absuelto "por primera vez el 19 de julio por un Tribunal compuesto por escabinos, representación popular en el Poder Judicial", y, por segunda vez, el 26 de septiembre "donde me absolvieron casi 100 mil votos que decidieron que yo fuera el representante democrático del Yaracuy ante la Asamblea Nacional", 

Indicó que tanto Mazuco como su persona debían estar en libertad desde el mismo momento de la proclamación porque "lo obliga y lo manda la Constitución en el artículo 200, donde establece que toda autoridad que no cumpla con ese mandato, se le abrirá investigación". 

"Se supone que la inmunidad es un velo que te da el pueblo y no hay posibilidades de interpretaciones contrarias", agregó. 

Asimismo, señaló que seguirá todos los procesos legales para que se respete la voluntad del pueblo. "La gente esta exigiendo que le respeten su decisión y hago votos porque el TSJ ponga orden en el bochinche del Poder Judicial yaracuyano y permita que no sólo se cumpla con nuestra libertad plena sino que también sean liberados todos mis compañeros. Ya basta de tanta injusticia en el país". 

Biagio Pilieri, quien fue acalde del municipio Bruzual en el periodo 2000-2004, ex diputado regional, y dos veces electo concejal, fue privado de libertad en enero de 2005 y acusado simultáneamente de malversación agravada de fondos públicos y de concertación ilegal con contratista. 

El pasado 26 de septiembre el pueblo de Yaracuy lo eligió como diputado a la Asamblea Nacional con casi 100 mil votos.

Un Mundo Sin Mordaza (04/04/2010).- Desde el encarcelamiento de la Juez Afiuni (por otorgar "ilegalmente" la libertad al empresario Eligio Cedeño), se han sucedido gran cantidad de arrestos, ejercidos por el aparato de seguridad e inteligencia del régimen chavista, para reprimir toda crítica o ataque contra las decisiones tomadas por el oficialismo.

Desde marzo fueron encarcelados: 

• Oswaldo Álvarez Paz: acusado de conspiración, luego de haber declarado por el canal Globovisión, que Venezuela se había convertido en un asilo para el tráfico de drogas.
• Guillermo Zuloaga, presidente de Globovisión: luego de criticar los esfuerzos del gobierno por cerrar a aquellos medios de comunicación que desafían al presidente Chávez. (Liberado por el TSJ, con la prohibición de salir del país).
• Wilmer Azuaje, legislador de la oposición: acusado de golpear a un funcionario de la policía durante un discusión acalorada. Por otra parte, Azuaje tenía pruebas de corrupción en contra de la familia Chávez. (Liberado por el TSJ, con la prohibición de hablar de su caso con los medios de comunicación social).

Según el General Ortega, abogado, las detenciones más recientes fueron para suprimir la conspiración y procesar a las personas, cuyos comentarios fueron considerados ofensivos para el presidente Chávez.


Criticism of Chávez Stifled by Arrests
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: April 3, 2010

LOS TEQUES, Venezuela — When Judge María Lourdes Afiuni issued a ruling in December that irked President Hugo Chávez, he did little to contain his outrage. The president, contending on national television that she would have been put before a firing squad in earlier times, sent his secret intelligence police to arrest her.

Then the agents took her to the overcrowded women’s prison in this city of slums near Caracas. They put her in a cell near more than 20 inmates whom Judge Afiuni had sentenced on charges like murder and drug smuggling.

“I’ve received threats from inmates telling me they will burn me alive because they see me as a symbol of the system that put them in prison,” said Judge Afiuni, 46, in her prison cell. “I’m in this hell because I had the temerity to do my job as a judge in a way that didn’t please Chávez.”

Since Judge Afiuni’s imprisonment, a dizzying sequence of other high-profile arrests has taken place, pointing to Mr. Chávez’s recent use of his security and intelligence apparatus to quash challenges to his grip on the country’s political institutions. The arrests come at a time of spreading public ire over an economy hobbled by electricity shortages and soaring inflation.

Senior officials in Mr. Chávez’s government here, including Attorney General Luisa Ortega, say the most recent arrests were necessary to suppress conspiracies or to prosecute people whose comments were deemed offensive to Mr. Chávez. In Judge Afiuni’s case, Attorney General Ortega said the judge had illegally freed another high-profile prisoner, the businessman Eligio Cedeño.

In March, intelligence agents arrested Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, a former presidential candidate, charging him with conspiracy after he said in televised remarks that Venezuela had become a haven for drug trafficking; he also supported a Spanish indictment asserting that officials here had helped Basque separatists train on Venezuelan soil.

Only days later, agents arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, the owner of the opposition television network Globovisión, after he criticized the government’s efforts to shut down media outlets that challenged the president. After an outcry by rights groups, Mr. Zuloaga was released on the condition that he could not travel outside the country.

Next, agents arrested Wilmer Azuaje, an opposition lawmaker, on charges of insulting and striking a police official during a heated discussion. Mr. Azuaje had in the past revealed corruption claims against Mr. Chávez’s siblings. Like Mr. Zuloaga, Mr. Azuaje was released, but the Supreme Court forbade him to discuss his arrest with the media.

The arrests have taken aim at some of Mr. Chávez’s most prominent critics ahead of legislative elections in September that put control of the National Assembly in play, and they illustrate Mr. Chávez’s attempts to tighten control over institutions like the judiciary.

Judge Afiuni, previously an obscure jurist, quickly rose to prominence when she freed Mr. Cedeño, a businessman jailed on charges of circumventing currency controls. The imprisonment of Mr. Cedeño, who had previously financed opposition politicians, was explicitly criticized last year by a panel of United Nations legal experts after his pretrial detention exceeded the limits set by Venezuelan law.

Judge Afiuni contended that she was following United Nations guidance when she released Mr. Cedeño, who subsequently fled to the United States. But Mr. Chávez immediately claimed that she had been bribed to release Mr. Cedeño, demanding that she be jailed for 30 years, even if new laws were needed to keep her in prison that long.

“The corruption charges are false, and prosecutors know that by looking at all of my banking records,” Judge Afiuni said. “But the damage to me has been done.”

Prosecutors overseeing Judge Afiuni’s case did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Criticism of her imprisonment from fellow judges in Venezuela has also been relatively muted, a reaction that is not entirely surprising because Mr. Chávez and his loyalists in the National Assembly stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy in 2004.

Outside Venezuela, criticism of her arrest has been more vocal. United Nations legal experts called for her immediate release. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said her arrest came within a political system already under stress because of a lack of judicial independence. Independent human rights group have assailed Mr. Chávez’s government over the arrest.

“It is not the sort of thing that happens in a functioning democracy, in which judicial institutions offer safeguards for rule of law,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

Still, there appear to be relatively few political prisoners in Venezuelan jails, legal experts here say. Twenty to 30 Venezuelans, including Judge Afiuni, are now imprisoned here because of their political activity or for reasons connected to publicly contradicting Mr. Chávez’s wishes, said Rocío San Miguel, a legal scholar here who leads a nongovernmental group that monitors Venezuelan security.

The high-profile prisoners also include Raúl Isaías Baduel, a former defense minister, and Franklin Brito, a biologist arrested at around the same time as Judge Afiuni and put under guard in a military hospital after refusing to end a hunger strike over the government’s handling of the seizure of his farmland by squatters.

While Judge Afiuni’s case has raised concern over the erosion of judicial independence, the most recent arrests are stoking fears about freedom of expression.

“The government is fraudulently inventing conspiracies, assassination plots and national emergencies,” said Mr. Álvarez Paz, the former presidential candidate, who was charged with conspiracy after his televised remarks. He is now being detained in a holding cell at the headquarters of the intelligence police. He responded to written questions submitted through his lawyer. “It is doing so out of nervousness over the precarious decline in the president’s credibility at home and abroad,” he said.

Judge Afiuni said she followed news of the other arrests from a small television in her cell that received a state network signal. She also gets updates from her 17-year-old daughter, who visits twice a week. Otherwise, she remains in her cell and reads, most recently a biography of the Dalai Lama, fearful of venturing into other areas of the prison.

One respite from her life in jail, she said, came when the rehearsal sounds from a prison orchestra of inmates traveled past the bars of her cell. She said its rendition of Vivaldi could move her close to tears. “Just when I cannot stand it any longer here,” she said, “the music lets me escape from reality a little and remember that this nightmare will end someday.”

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

Fuente: Criticism of Chávez Stifled by Arrests

Un Mundo Sin Mordaza (02/04/2010).- Human Rights Watch (HRW) y Reporteros Sin Fronteras (RSF) expresaron su preocupación por las detenciones en Venezuela del presidente de Globovisión, Guillermo Zuloaga, y el exgobernador Álvarez Paz. Ambos cometieron un "delito de opinión".

Sin libertad de expresión
En Venezuela "estamos entrando en un período oscuro"
EUROPA PRESS

Estas dos ONG creen que el copamiento político total de Chávez en el Congreso y en el Tribunal, hace pensar que las violaciones a la libertad de expresión se van a agravar.

En Venezuela, si opinas "atente a las consecuencias", declaró el hijo de Zuloaga recientemente. Opinar a ojos del Presidente Chávez es sinónimo de delinquir, conspirar o difamar, e incluso "ofender al jefe del Estado".

Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, ex gobernador del estado Zulia fue encarcelado el pasado 22 de marzo por unas declaraciones efectuadas en televisión contra Chávez, y se expone ahora a una condena de dos a dieciséis años de prisión.

Acusado de "instigación pública a delinquir", de "conspiración" y de "difusión de información falsa", el presidente de Globovisión, Guillermo Zuloaga, fue arrestado y puesto en libertad provisional sin poder salir del país, por haber dicho públicamente que la libertad de expresión no existe en Venezuela.

Ahora se enfrenta a una condena de entre seis a 30 meses de prisión por "ofensa al jefe de Estado" y de dos a cinco años por "causar pánico en la colectividad por medio de informaciones falsas difundidas por la prensa".

Desde la asociación de Reporteros sin Fronteras se preguntan después de todo, ¿qué se puede decir acerca del país y de su presidente? Igualmente, el director para el continente americano de HRW, José Miguel Vivanco, cree que a partir de ahora las leyes draconianas de Chávez van a ir a más.

Fuente: En Venezuela "estamos entrando en un período oscuro"

Un Mundo Sin Mordaza (29/03/2010).- La Suprema Corte prohibió a Wilmer Azuaje, conocido opositor del Presidente Hugo Chávez, dar declaraciones en cualquier medio (televisión, radio, periódicos o internet) sobre su situación y los cargos que se le imputan.

Court slaps media gag on Chavez opponent
AP
Monday, 29 March 2010

Venezuela's highest court barred an outspoken opponent of President Hugo Chavez from talking to news media about criminal charges alleging he struck a police official.

The Supreme Court's order prohibits politician Wilmer Azuaje from "talking in relation to the present issue through any media outlet," including television, radio, newspapers or the internet.

It said the measure is meant to protect the "reputation, integrity and honour of the victim."

The court order comes as a chorus of Chavez critics and human rights groups are accusing the government of increasingly using the courts to punish its adversaries while ignoring other allegedly illegal acts by the socialist leader's allies.

Mr Chavez rejects such accusations.

Mr Azuaje, a former supporter of the president, denied any wrongdoing, saying the charges against him are politically motivated for his criticism of Mr Chavez and his family.

The legislator from Mr Chavez's home state of Barinas long complained of harassment by authorities that he claims is retaliation for his allegations of corruption and nepotism against Mr Chavez's family. The family denies the accusations.

Police official Yuraima Castillo accused Mr Azuaje of verbally abusing her and grabbing and hitting her on the shoulder during an argument while he was picking up a car that had been stolen from his mother and recovered by police.

Mr Azuaje was detained after prosecutors accused him of insulting a public official and breaking a law that prohibits violence against women.

The National Assembly, which is dominated by allies of Mr Chavez, lifted Mr Azuaje's immunity as a politician from prosecution - a rare step usually reserved for crimes such as corruption.

Mr Azuaje was released from police custody after appearing in court on Saturday.

The order issued by the Supreme Court on Sunday said Azuaje was freed on the condition he return to court every 15 days while awaiting trial. He is also banned from leaving the country and must undergo an evaluation conducted by court authorities who specialise in cases involving violence against women.

Mr Azuaje, a former member of the president's ruling party, called Mr Chavez a "coward" and accused him of using the judicial and legislative branches of government to go after opponents.

Fuente: Court slaps media gag on Chavez opponent