Carlos Sanchez Berzain Abogado | Estadista | Político | Politólogo
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
April 7, 2020 1:03
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Criminal charges filed by the United States’ Department of Justice against the transnational organized crime’s group led by Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and the FARC’s leadership, include the President of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice, Maikel Moreno, criminally charged at the Southern District Court in Florida. The case of this “despicable judge” -now a wanted criminal- ought to be the first of many criminal charges to be filed against Castrochavist dictatorships’ judges in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, who perverted the course of justice and turned it into a mechanism for repression and the operation of organized crime.
It has been denounced and proven for years on end that “Castrochavism’s dictatorships in the Americas use the justice system as an instrument for political persecution, to jail, exile, and assassinate opposing members’ reputation”. The social and political control model implemented by the organized crime’s group that holds power in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, that subjected Ecuador with Rafael Correa and Bolivia with Evo Morales, turned judges as the dictatorial regimes’ “instrument for repression, intimidation, corruption, and impunity”.
Little known, and generally anonymous the “dictatorships’ judges” are an essential element to sustain each regime, giving them a stamp of legal approval, repressing the real opposition, and wrecking the country’s institutional legal system. They are “despicable judges” whom I define as “those in charge of administering justice who deliberately shy away from their basic duties of probity, impartiality, and legality by subordinating their official roles and their rulings for the benefit of those who hold power, turning their activities into vile prevarication that violate human rights and individual basic freedoms”.
It is in this factual reality’s framework in which we consider the criminal charges against Maikel Moreno, a wanted criminal with corroborated and pre-constituted proof of millionaire charges for bribery to illegally settle civil and criminal cases in Venezuela, fat personal accounts, and squandering expenditures in luxurious items and events in the United States. For the still incumbent President of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice, the prevarication and the use of his judicial role as part of a criminal system are but the tip of the iceberg, a “tiny part seen of what it really is” organized crime’s former and current encroachment into the Castrochavist justice systems.
This “detestable judge” Maikel Moreno is the symbol, but he is not the only one. We must identify the names, positions, “despicable rulings” of judges in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia who opened cases due to the dictatorship’s accusations against members of the opposition, jailed thousands of men, women, young people, civilians, and military who defended democracy. It is urgent for everyone to understand that in order to regain democracy and end dictatorships, we must uncover their “despicable judges” so they can be nationally or internationally charged and prosecuted.
Justice system’s crimes, like the one against Jose Daniel Ferrer in Cuba, are real proof of sixty-one years of judicial infamy in Cuba and so are the hundreds of summarily sentenced and killed by firing squads, or the “despicable sentencing” of Armando Valladares a prisoner of conscience and the thousands of anonymous prisoners like him. The arrests, political prisoners, torture, despicable sentencings to keep Maduro and his criminal gang in power are irrefutable proof -by the thousands- in Venezuela.
In Nicaragua, the manipulation created by a vicious circle of extortion amongst prosecuted and freed prisoners is the means for negotiation used by dictator Ortega. This is why we must know the names of those detestable judges, and we will soon and quickly see the benefits they have reaped from their heinous crimes.
Ecuador’s “handling of justice” by Rafael Correa to persecute and jail members of the opposition like Galo Lara, or to kidnap others like Fernando Balda, or to exile journalists like Emilio Palacio and more, all have “detestable judges” whose names and current positions must be internationally known.
Accusations personally made by Evo Morales in Bolivia against members of the real opposition, the revamping of the entire judicial system in order to constitute his own designated judges and prosecutors, the judicial proceedings with hundreds of political prisoners like in the October 2003, Las Americas Hotel, Terrorism, and dozens more cases, the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling to twice enable the dictator as a presidential candidate, the covering up of more than 20 bloody massacres, the issuing of “amnesty decrees” to favor Evo Morales and more, all have detestable judges whose names must comprise the list of the transnational organized crime group’s “despicable judges”.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy
Published in Spanish by Infobae.com Sunday, April 5, 2020
Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.