Sawt Falasteen - New police units, but same charges of human rights abuses in Venezuela

The police officers denounced by Alvarez belong to units that replaced the Special Action Forces (FAES), a feared elite division dissolved in 2021 after massive complaints of human rights abuses.

But activists still accuse these new brigades of abuses such as arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture.

On September 4, five days after his arrest, Alvarez was led into court and "bravely gave a description of his torturers and the way they tortured him," his mother, Wenderlin Pena, told AFP, sitting in the small living room of her house in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas.

Medical examinations showed that the 24-year-old university student suffered "partial loss of vision" in his left eye and injuries to a kidney and a leg, according to his family and to his defense lawyers, who blame agents from the new police divisions.

Before the unit's breakup, the United Nations had demanded that the FAES, created in 2015, be disbanded, accusing it of extrajudicial executions in poor areas.

After its dissolution, officials who had been accused of abuses were reassigned to units such as the Directorate of Strategic and Tactical Actions, the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and the Directorate Against Organized Crime, all of which have been accused of brutality.

"New structures were created, but the old practices of serious human rights violations continue to be maintained," said Marino Alvarado, a member of the rights NGO PROVEA.

- 'Selective repression' -

According to Alvarado, it was "very serious" that heads of the defunct FAES were promoted, as was the case with Jose Miguel Dominguez, the former director of FAES who was sanctioned by the United States, and who is today second-in-command in the national police.

"Around 10" agents acted in Alvarez's case and "we have fully identified five" without them having faced any consequences so far, said Joel Garcia, the student's lawyer.

"There is no political will to investigate or punish," he added.

A UN observer mission accused the Maduro government of "selective repression" against its adversaries, with the police acting as one of its enforcement arms.

On September 25, it presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council in which it said it "had reasonable grounds" to believe that between January 2020 and August 2023, there had been at least "five arbitrary deprivations of life, 14 disappearances, short-term forced arrests and 58 arbitrary detentions," as well as "28 cases of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" against detainees, "including 19 cases of the use of sexual violence."

Caracas called the members of the UN mission "mercenaries."

Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said on Tuesday that the security organizations act "in accordance with international protocols" and that the country "sanctions any non-observance of human rights."

Attorney General Tarek William Saab said that more than 500 officials have been convicted of human rights violations since 2017.

Venezuela also faces an investigation before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity.

- 'Terrorism?' -

Alvarez was linked to six union leaders sentenced in August to 16 years in prison for "conspiracy," a sentence that rights activists see as retaliation for protests for better conditions in the public sector.

The university student, according to his lawyer, was forced to record a video in which he incriminated a union member and an activist.

Alvarez had left his mother's house to do some shopping before his younger brother's birthday. Then he disappeared.

When the family finally tracked him down a day later at a police station, after a distressing search through other police stations and hospitals, the officers said he had been detained for posting a pamphlet on a bust of the independence hero Simon Bolivar. They said he would be released within days, according to Pena.

It was only once they were in court that an official "gave me the first information that John is imprisoned for 'terrorism'.'"

"Terrorism? Is terrorism posting a pamphlet?" she said. "I am going to stand up, as a mother, to defend my son."

K.AbuTaha--SF-PST