The judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno rejected the complaint filed against the former president of the government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for allegedly crimes against humanity and torture in Venezuela because it relies, “solely and exclusively”, on press clippings and social networks.
In an order known this Friday, the instructor affirms, following the criteria of the prosecution, that in the complaint there is no “any objective data” which links the former president to the reported events “nor any allusion to his knowledge thereof.”
In the complaint, which is divided into several sections, a general introduction to the political regime of Venezuela is made and then assures that Zapatero “was not only aware” of the crimes committed by Nicolás Maduro, but that “everything indicates his clear link with regime management Bolivarianism and that its activity aimed to promote its perpetuation outside of a democratic process.
Likewise, the individuals who promoted the complaint – a group of people who feel persecuted by Venezuela’s leaders – claimed in the complaint that the former president’s intervention in “the release of private opposition leaders of freedom, that is to say of political prisoners, as well as of those who find themselves in a clandestine situation, to the point of leading them into exile to the Kingdom of Spain – in reference to Edmundo González -, also “He is obeying the mission entrusted to him by the leadership of the regime.”.
Furthermore, on September 23, a written extension of the complaint was filed before the same Central Court of Instruction number 2 of the National Court in which the plaintiffs declared having provided “new facts based on journalistic information on certain suspicious threats dispersed» allegedly by Zapatero against the president of the Constituent Assembly of Venezuela, Julio Borges.
But Judge Ismael Moreno forgets that among the plaintiffs’ statements, apart from the press cuttings, “there is no offer no element or principle of proof which reasonably supports its plausibility, the complainants limiting themselves to asserting its existence without any objective support.
For this reason and due to the repeated jurisprudence of the Supreme Court that exists in this regard, Moreno chose to reject the complaint, also in accordance with the position reflected by the Prosecutor’s Office of the National Tribunal in its report.
