CARACAS, Tuesday August 19, 2008 | Update
Human rights organizations requested on Tuesday to punish
once and for all the perpetrators and masterminds, "accomplices
and accessories" of the killings known as El Amparo massacre.
Marino Alvarado, the director of NGO Provea talked about
his plans to appear on Wednesday at the Attorney General Office,
together with the two survivors, in order to ask Attorney
General Luisa Ortega Díaz to reopen the investigation
under the ordinary jurisdiction.
According to the Provea director, murderers have been fully
identified, including 16 police and military officers.
Alvarado named also Henry López Sisco, former official
of the Directorate for Intelligence, Security and Prevention
(Disip), and Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, the current
minister of the Interior and Justice. Based on the case file
information, both of them presumably planned the massacre.
On October 29th, 1988, 14 people were shot dead at La Colorada
stream, El Amparo, western Apure state.
Military courts and the Supreme Court of Justice resolved
that the defendants were not responsible for the events. Afterwards,
the investigation was closed.
However, the case was taken to the Inter-American Court on
Human Rights. The court issued a judgment on behalf of the
victims' relatives, and requested compensation from the Venezuelan
state as well as an investigation.
Defendants allege that the victims were guerilla members,
but human rights organizations are certain that they were
fishermen.
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."