Eight Police Officers Accused of Killings in April Coup to Face Trial

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On Wednesday, a judge ruled that a trial could be held against eight police officers of the Caracas metropolitan police, who are accused of shooting demonstrators on April 11, 2002, during the confrontations that eventually led to the failed coup against President Chavez.

The eight police officers have already been under arrest for a while. They are members of the police force that is directed by Mayor Alfredo Peña, who is one of President Chavez’s most ardent opponents. Numerous pieces of evidence have emerged since the failed coup, which indicate that the deaths that occurred on the day of the coup were planned by leaders of the opposition, in order to blame these on the president and then use them as an excuse for ousting him.

In an interview with the BBC, the prosecutor who is filing the charges said, “Since it has not been possible to prove precisely who caused the deaths, but since it is known that all of them had high potency weapons, such as M16, HK35 and HK33, they are being accused of complicity in the homicides, which is a felony identified in our legal code.”

The police officers are being accused of killing Erasmo Sánchez and Rudy Urbano Duque. Also, they are being accused of attempted murder, injury, and impermissible use of weapons of war against 25 other victims.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1127

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Background article

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Opposition-Controlled Police Acted as Sharpshooters During Coup D'etat of 2002

Caracas, November 27 (Venezuelanalysis.com).- Caracas Metropolitan Police (PM) Inspector Leonardo Navas, presented to the public a series of radio conversation presumably recorded during the April 11, 2002 coup d'etat against President Chavez, through the communications frequency used by the police, which may incriminate police chiefs and officers in the deaths that occurred that day.

The Metropolitan Police is controlled by Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, a prominent figure of the opposition. Several Metropolitan Police officers are facing a trial, accused of some of the deaths that day.

The tapes supports the arguments raised by defense lawyers of four Chavez supporters who fired shots with pistols from the Llaguno Bridge and were absolved of all charges recently, after it was demonstrated in court that they acted in self defense. TV channels used footage of these four men firing shots, to accuse them of "shooting at innocent opposition demonstrators," and accuse President Chavez of ordering the killings.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1113


A Metropolitan Police officer (right) hides behind a anti-riot vehicle and looks at Chavez's supporters gathered at the Llaguno bridge.

It's also great to know the American embassy is being revealed for its awareness of the police shootings of Venezuelan citizen protesters:

"Zeus 32 Americana wants information on the situation", says one of the officers. Navas says that "Zeus 32 Americana" was the codename for the American Embassy that day, and that it is very curious that in a situation as critical as that one, the police is informing people such as the American Ambassador, Charles Shapiro. "It seems like they were monitoring the whole situation," says Navas.

I think most people suspected this all along.

Thanks for these links. I feel lucky to be able to stash them away in my own files. Muchas gracias.

DECLINE OF THE BANANA EMPIRE?

We sure did, Mr. President. How could we have "misunderestimated" your regime’s ability to drive your country two Worlds back to the Third--not just a Third World country, but a full blown Banana Empire. As U.S. imperial reach is extended, the country is ruled by corporations through an unelected executive who continues to gut civil liberties in the name of national security with the complicity of a servile media and a one-party system disguised as two--not to mention economic and environmental degradation. Welcome to Third World politics kiddies!

Let’s begin with the rigged election of 2000. The son of a former President, "Bush the Lesser" (thank you, Arundhati Roy), had his brother Jeb swinging votes in Florida. The blatant politicking and nepotism of that sham was an electoral fiasco that probably even made Mexico’s PRI blush. When the Cuban government offers to send election monitors to Florida, something momentous has occurred.

With the worst still to come, Bush the Lesser assumed power and appointed a recycled cabinet that, for the purposes of this mental exercise, we’ll call a junta. I’ve always been amazed at the way some Latin American dictators--Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer Suárez or Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt, among others--maintained political legitimacy after a well-documented reign of terror. Bush’s neocon cabal, including such Iran-Contra scandal veterans as John Negroponte and Elliott Abrams, seems to have done the same. Abrams helped support some of the most repressive regimes in Latin America and helped conceal their abuses, mostly in countries dominated by the U.S. fruit industry--the so-called Banana Republics. The irony of Abrams’ appointment and title was probably lost on Bush when the one-time Contra supporter was given the post of Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations in 2001.

Then came September 11, sadly an event that is now used to justify the Wars du Jour. As in the Latin American dirty wars of recent decades, national security is now used to rally the population behind illegal and inhumane detentions of citizens and non-citizens alike. As far as we know, today’s "detainees" could be suffering the same torture endured by the desaparecidos of the South.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2288#

Check out this five minute video -

http://www.angelfire.com/creep/gwbush/remindus.html

Here's another two Presidents with baseball caps: