National Assembly Deputy Jorge Arreaza addresses the parliament during a discussion on the amnesty law. Photo: File photo.
The president of Venezuela’s Monitoring Commission of the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence, Deputy Jorge Arreaza, has reported that most of the applications received under this legal tool correspond to people who were in a judicial process, but not behind bars or detained.
“It’s not that we released 8,000 people from prison; that number of people detained for political reasons has never existed during the Bolivarian Revolution,” he explained this Wednesday, April 15. “The vast majority, 96.1%, were in legal proceedings and appeared regularly before the courts, and only 314 people were detained for political reasons, which is in accordance with the law.”
He stated that 8,406 applications have already received a ruling, which has allowed progress in reviewing cases that had previously remained open for years. “There were 8,000 people; the vast majority of them had been in process since 2004, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2017. How do we address this? Through due process,” he explained, “which requires us to study the justice system, and this justifies the call for reform of the justice administration system made by our acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.”
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He highlighted the unprecedented level of coordination undertaken in implementing this law, given the overall volume of applications received. “As of yesterday, Tuesday, we had received 14,368 applications (11,772 valid applications),” he added, “numbers that force us to ask ourselves questions.”
Arreaza noted that all cases have been processed in accordance with the procedures established by the Commission, and that this law seeks to contribute to the country’s political stability and break the cycle of conspiracies and pardons.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
