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The arrest of several relatives of activist Rocío San Miguel increases tension in Venezuela

2024-02-12T22:08:44.494Z

Highlights: Rocío San Miguel, director of the NGO Citizen Control, was arrested by the political police on accusations of conspiracy. The whereabouts of her, her daughter, her father, siblings and other relatives are unknown. The arrest of San Miguel - an activist highly respected for her prudent and well-founded statements in the area of national security and defense - has caused enormous alarm in the democratic field. In the last hours, a public statement signed by 205 civil organizations and 415 people was issued demanding that the Government immediately release her.


The civil activist, director of the NGO Citizen Control, was arrested by the political police on accusations of conspiracy. The whereabouts of her, her daughter, her father, siblings and other relatives are unknown.


A day later, no one knows anything about Rocío San Miguel.

The Human Rights activist and director of the NGO Citizen Control, one of the public spokespersons with the greatest knowledge of the military world in the country, was detained on Sunday at the airport and her whereabouts are still unknown.

To her arrest, which has caused enormous commotion and concern in the country, this Monday was added the arrest of Miranda Díaz San Miguel, her daughter, who was going to travel with her to Spain on the 9th;

her brothers, Miguel Ángel and Alberto San Miguel;

her father, Victor Díaz Paruta, and Alberto González, another relative.

Her whereabouts are not known from them either.

The attorney general of the Chavista regime, Tarek William Saab, acknowledged this Sunday that San Miguel was detained, without saying anything about the place of her detention.

Saab added that San Miguel had been singled out by some recently detained soldiers for planning an alleged military coup against Chavismo.

“There is an arrest warrant against her for being linked and referenced in the conspiracy and attempted assassination plot called White Bracelet,” said Saab.

For a couple of weeks, especially after the release of Alex Saab within the framework of the Barbados agreements, the Government of Nicolás Maduro has clearly hardened its tone with its interlocutors, doubling demands and ignoring agreed paths, by denouncing the existence of a plot in which the opposition was supposedly involved.

Chavismo has already denied, apparently definitively, the participation of the candidate elected by the opposition in its primary elections, María Corina Machado.

The arrest of San Miguel - an activist highly respected for her prudent and well-founded statements in the area of ​​national security and defense - has caused enormous alarm in the democratic field, among the country's political and civil leadership.

In the last hours, a public statement signed by 205 civil organizations and 415 people was issued demanding that the Government immediately release her.

“We alert the world that the repressive onslaught of the Maduro regime continues.

Rocío San Miguel, human rights defender and president of the organization Citizen Control, was arrested.

We call for national and international solidarity with her and with all political prisoners and persecuted people in Venezuela,” declared Machado, presidential candidate of the Venezuelan opposition.

Juan González Taguaruco, one of San Miguel's defense lawyers, explains that "it is not known which police agency detained her, where she is detained, which court she is under, or who the prosecutor is directing the investigation."

“Here we can speak with complete propriety about a forced disappearance.

Attorney General Saab knew that he had to present it within a period of no more than 48 hours and he did not do so,” he added.

San Miguel, a Venezuelan of Spanish parents, and her daughter, Miranda, were surprised with the announcement of a judicial investigation when they were preparing to take a flight to Spain from the Simón Bolívar International Airport, in Maiquetia, half an hour from Caracas.

González Taguaruco comments that San Miguel was not informed at all of the judicial measure, which was waiting for her at the airport immigration step while she lived her life with total normality and innocence.

“We were talking with Miranda, Rocío's daughter, when they arrested her, and then we found out that they arrested her too.

“We are extremely concerned about this chain of decisions.”

Provea, one of the most combative and active NGOs in the country in the defense of human rights, also issued a statement of protest, in which it demands “from the different bodies of the United Nations and the entire International Human Rights System, to speak out firmly for the release of Rocío San Miguel.”

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Source: elparis

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