This article was originally posted by Latin American Herald Tribune
The trial of former Judge María Lourdes Afiuni is one of the emblematic cases of how the justice system is being used to take political reprisals in the Hugo Chávez administration.
In December 2009, María Lourdes Afiuni, then a judge of the Republic, was arrested and charged with corruption, abuse of authority, favoring evasion, and conspiracy to commit a crime, as a result of having granted the businessman Eligio Cedeño parole. Cedeño, whose case was subjected to numerous delays, had been held in prison awaiting trial since 2007. The problem with Afiuni’s decision was that Cedeño is one of the many victims of the government’s political persecution.
That was when Afiuni’s ordeal began and, as has happened to other Venezuelans, right from the moment she was arbitrarily detained, Afiuni has been a victim of a justice system that is a vassal of the Executive.
On December 11, even before her case came to court, President Hugo Chávez gave the order, in a nationwide networked broadcast, that Afiuni be sentenced to 30 years, adding that, if the death penalty existed in Venezuela, Afiuni would deserve it.
More evidence that Afiuni is yet another of Hugo Chávez’s prisoners is hardly necessary.