Venezuelan president ignores calls from political campaigners to release former judge, arrested after bailing banker
Hugo Chávez has announced Christmas pardons for 141 prisoners, but ignored fresh calls to free a jailed Venezuelan judge whose 2009 imprisonment has fuelled a fierce debate over political interference in Venezuela's judicial system, and become a cause celebre among opponents of the country's divisive president.
"In total 100 men and 41 women are getting out today, across the country," Chávez told a Christmas eve cabinet meeting according to Venezuela's El Universal newspaper. "We must help them build a plan for life so they do not fall down again, because many of them have lost their direction," added Chávez.The announcement came days after Noam Chomsky and another US academics called on Chávez to "correct an injustice" by releasing Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who was jailed after releasing a banker with ties to the opposition from prison.
"The Christmas-time pardons are an appropriate occasion for President Chávez to correct an injustice and avoid greater damage to her health by a humanitarian release," Chomsky wrote.Afiuni was jailed in December 2009 after granting bail to Eligio Cedeño, a banker and businessman with connections to the Venezuelan opposition. Cedeño had been charged with evading currency controls and fled Venezuela after his release. Chávez reacted furiously, announcing on local television that in another era the judge might have been brought before a firing squad. Afiuni was jailed.
Until February this year Afiuni, a single mother and cancer patient, was being held in Caracas' Los Teques female prison, where she reportedly suffered death threats. Despite being placed under house arrest in February, repeated calls for Afiuni's full release have so far been ignored.
Chávez's apparent failure to grant a Christmas pardon to Afiuni will come as a blow to many campaigners, including Chomsky, who had penned a similar plea to the Venezuelan president in July.
"After more than two years in custody, there are no guarantees of a fair trial. I am convinced that Judge Afiuni has suffered enough and should be released," Chomsky, a linguistics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in his latest letter.
Chomsky said that while in jail the judge had "experienced grave abuses that led to a severe deterioration of her physical and psychological condition."On Saturday it was announced that José Sánchez Montiel, an opposition politician, was freed after four years behind bars. Montiel, who has prostate cancer, was jailed in 2007 after being accused of being involved in the killing of a military intelligence officer.