Exiled prosecutor urges sanctions on Venezuela

[Zorro]

Source: AP

Venezuela's socialist officials consider him a traitor while the government's opponents say his long service to the regime should make him ineligible for U.S. political asylum.

Franklin Nieves, the former Venezuelan prosecutor who fled last week to Miami and denounced his own role rigging evidence against opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, says he deeply regrets his actions and wants to make amends by helping U.S. authorities expose how Venezuela's judiciary is controlled by President Nicolas Maduro's government.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Nieves said he supports calls for the Obama administration to sanction the other officials who helped convict Lopez to almost 14 years imprisonment on charges of inciting violence during last year's anti-government protests. Before fleeing Venezuela, Nieves was among five people a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers said should be sanctioned.

In several interviews and a video posted to the Internet, Nieves has detailed how his superiors and high-level officials allegedly ordered him to arrest Lopez and three others even before they staged the first anti-government demonstration in February 2014 that kicked off weeks of deadly unrest. When he protested that no such grounds existed, he said he Brig. Gen. Manuel Bernal, then head of intelligence police, told him the instructions came from Maduro.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/exiled-prosecutor-urges-sanctions-venezuela-181049609.html

[Marksman_91]

1. Meanwhile, the useful idiots who defend the Chavista regime are keeping VERY quiet about this

I wonder if they're just gonna say that Nieves was "bought off" or some shit like that by the US/CIA. Just letting you know, Nieves would've been VERY well-paid and protected by the central government considering that they control the judiciary branch. And yet he still gave all of that up to reveal truths about how there is absolutely no independence of powers in Venezuela and how they all respond to what the PSUV leadership tells them. Some "democracy" that is.

[Archae]

2. It is possible he just wants to save his own ass.

He's in it up to his nose with Maduro and the corrupt Chavistas, and he sees the writing on the wall where they are going to lose out big in a revolution, most likely a right-wing one.

It's something I don't want, and I doubt anyone here wants it either.
But Maduro ran his country into the sewer.

[Marksman_91]

3. I'm glad to see that you at least acknowledge it was all thanks to Maduro and the chavista regime

Too many in this site believe the utter BS that it's all some kind of CIA/US-backed conspiracy to cripple the Venezuelan economy like it happened with Allende in 1973. But at this point, and considering how much control the Chavistas have over the country and all its means of production and distribution, it's kind of idiotic or cynical (or both) to believe such nonsense.

[Archae]

4. The Chavistas have to acknowledge reality.

Reality sucks in Venezuela, that's why Maduro is falling back on the old tried-and-true beating of the war drums, now.

"Look! There's an obvious distraction!"