CARACAS.- The organization Human Rights Watch expressed its concern about the arbitrary detention – by the regime of Nicolas Maduroand forced disappearance of the human rights defender and president of the Venezuelan NGO, Control Ciudadano, Rocío San Miguel.
Through the X social network account, HRW urged the Venezuelan regime to release the activist and respect the due right to legal defense.
“We follow with deep concern the detention of human rights defender Rocío San Miguel. Her whereabouts remain unknown, which could qualify her detention as a forced disappearance. We urge her immediate release and respect for her right to legal defense.”
San Miguel was presented on the night of February 12 before the Second Court against Terrorism, along with several of her relatives, who are also deprived of liberty, reported Nicolás Maduro’s prosecutor, Tarek William Saab.
Saab stated in and association, among others”.
San Miguel’s defense denounced earlier that she and five of her relatives: her daughter, two brothers, her father and her ex-husband suffered “forced disappearance.”
This is “a clear pattern of forced disappearance,” said Juan González Taguaruco, one of the defense lawyers of the activist detained on February 9 in the immigration area of the Maiquetía airport that serves Caracas.
The prosecution will also request preventive deprivation of liberty for retired military officer Alejandro José Gonzales De Canales Plaza, former partner of San Miguel, for the “alleged commission of the crimes of revelation of political and military secrets concerning the security of the nation, obstruction of administration of Justice and association”.
They demand the release of San Miguel
The US Embassy for Venezuela and the Organization of American States (OAS) They also rejected the “arbitrary” detention of Rocío San Migueland urged the Nicolás Maduro regime to release him “immediately” and that of “all political prisoners.”
In a publication on its worrying trend of apparently arbitrary arrests of democratic actors.”
For his part, the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, condemned the “arbitrary detention of the director of the NGO Citizen Control, Rocío San Miguel, a recognized and respected lawyer,” who has precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. (IACHR).
According to figures from the NGO Foro Penal, a humanitarian organization that provides legal assistance in the face of “arbitrary” detentions in Venezuela, as of February 5, there were 261 political prisoners, among whom there are 18 women and 146 soldiers, and 123 who are not. They have been found guilty.
Gonzalo Himob, vice-president of Foro Penal, indicated that they do not know where San Miguel is and added that they are collecting information on the case.
Source: EDITORIAL/AFP
