Caracas – AFP
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is on a three-day visit to Venezuela, will hold a preliminary hearing on British International Criminal Court lawyer Karim Khan’s crimes against humanity and VTV public television programs.
The Venezuelan government statement said that “President Maduro thanked the Attorney General for his commitment to investigate the Venezuelan case.”
Con Caracas arrived at the invitation of the Maduro government as part of a tour of Latin America, which had earlier taken him to Colombia.
The state-run VTV channel previously announced on social media that the lawyer had arrived at the Maiquetia airport, where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Felix Placencia.
The channel wrote on Twitter, “This visit in response to the official invitation of the Government of Venezuela through the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic comes within the framework of the institutional relationship established by Venezuela with the International Criminal Court.”
During the visit, Khan added, “we can take a closer look at the progress made by government agencies and establish a positive cooperative dialogue.”
The hack-based tribunal began its preliminary investigation in 2018 into allegations of human rights abuses by President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, particularly the violent crackdown on anti-government protests in 2017, in which nearly 100 people were killed.
In December 2020, Fato Benzouda, a former lawyer for the court, said there were “reasonable grounds” for believing that crimes against humanity existed, but chose to see if Caracas would bring the perpetrators to justice.
Khan will have to decide whether or not to ask the judges to open a full investigation into the case, which will bring charges against those involved in the repression.
The agenda of the lawyer of the International Criminal Court is not public. But the court said he would meet with “representatives of the authorities, the judiciary, diplomatic forces and NGOs” during his visit.
“We seek justice because the dictatorship is losing us,” Quito wrote on Twitter on Monday.