Venezuela opposition leader remains in jail while awaiting trial

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/05/venezuela-opposition-leader-jail-awaiting-trial

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A prominent leader of Venezuela's opposition will remain in jail while he awaits trial on charges of inciting violence at anti-government demonstrations.

A judge's ruling on Thursday followed deliberations lasting three days in which Leopoldo López's attorneys argued that the former mayor was being hounded for his political beliefs.

López, 43, is the combative head of the Popular Will party. Before turning himself in to authorities in February, he had been spearheading a movement to force the president, Nicolás Maduro, to resign.

Authorities ordered his arrest after three people were killed on 12 February during clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters. At least 42 people have been killed on both sides in three months of unrest.

If convicted, the Harvard-educated politician could face up to 13 years in jail. The trial is expected to begin in August, his lawyers said.

Maduro's arrest of his opponents has drawn widespread criticism abroad, with Amnesty International calling the charges against López a "politically motivated attempt to silence dissent" at a time of mounting frustration with 57% inflation and record food shortages.

A report on Thursday by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists described cases of arbitrary detentions and intimidation of student protesters and political leaders that point to a lack of independence for judges and prosecutors.

Supporters read a letter from López written by hand from the courthouse in which he accused the judge presiding over his case of "selling her conscience to the corrupt powers". In a similarly defiant tone, allies called for a mass demonstration on Sunday in the same Caracas plaza where López emerged from days of hiding in February to turn himself in to authorities after delivering a fiery speech to a huge crowd.

Referring to López as a prisoner of conscience, David Smolansky, the mayor of Caracas's El Hatillo district, said the jailed activist's "only crime is thinking differently".

Each day of the preliminary hearing began for Lopez around 4am, when he was woken in his cell at a military prison outside Caracas and taken under heavy police escort to a downtown courtroom, where proceedings lasted late into the night. Journalists and Lopez's wife were barred from attending the hearing.

Even as the government has been pressing its case against López, it has launched what appears to be a new legal battle against another fierce opponent, the ousted MP María Corina Machado.

On Wednesday, the attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, said Machado and two other opposition politicians had been summoned to testify in an investigation of an alleged US-backed plot to assassinate Maduro.

Machado said she had yet to receive the notice and it wasn't clear from the attorney general's remarks if she herself was under investigation.

The government last week released what it said were recent emails by Machado in which she discusses the need to "annihilate" Maduro and boasts of having the support of a senior US state department official who is now the US ambassador to Colombia.

Machado, who was stripped of her seat in Congress after denouncing Maduro at the Organisation of American States, has denied the charges and said the government was fabricating evidence in a bid to intimidate her.

The Democratic Unity alliance, which in May froze talks with the government to ease tensions, has conditioned its return to the negotiating table on López's release.