Venezuela’s president promises to revamp country’s police force

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/venezuela-president-to-revamp-police-force

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Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro has promised to launch a thorough purge of the country’s police force after two of its members were incriminated in the gruesome murder of a pro-government politician earlier this month.

The announcement was made during the swearing-in of the new minister of justice, Carmen Melendez, whom President Maduro entrusted with the task of “revolutionising the police”.

“Let’s go deep in our construction of a police system worthy of our fatherland. We need a revolution of the police force here in Venezuela, and I will carry it out without delay, without excuses”, said president Maduro during the televised event on Monday night.

Maduro said that police officers had taken part in the murder of Robert Serra, a rising star in the country’s ruling United Socialist party (PSUV). Serra and his assistant, Maria Herrera, were stabbed to death in the deputy’s home on 1 October. To date, nine people have been detained in a case which has awakened fears of an escalation in political violence in the deeply divided nation.

According to Maduro, two attempts against the president of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the minister of education, Hector Navarro, were prevented in the days following Serra’s assassination.

During the ceremony, Maduro said that the group of municipal policemen detained had “betrayed their oath” and conspired with Colombian paramilitaries to assassinate Serra. The investigation of the murder had revealed evidence that “small groups of police officers” were in the pay of criminal groups, he said.

Maduro has blamed radical factions within the country’s extreme right, as well as Colombia’s ex-president, Álvaro Uribe, for masterminding the murder in an attempt to destablise the country.

He has promised to reveal further evidence that Serra was murdered in a “counterrevolutionary paramilitary assasination”.

“We have the proof in our hands of who the intellectual authors are, how much it cost and how they paid”, Maduro said last week.

The decision to revamp the country’s police force comes just days after previous minister of justice, Miguel Rodríguez Torres was forced to step down from his post following criticism of his handling of a clash between pro-government armed groups, or colectivos, and the investigative police unit days after Serra’s murder.

The standoff, which left five dead including the leaders of two colectivo groups, spurred a wave of protests among the militia members who demanded the dismissal of Torres.

To critics here, Torres’s dismissal following pressure from the colectivos, is the clearest sign yet that the Venezuelan government has lost its control over the country’s arms.

“The boundaries between the groups who posses weapons legally and those who have them illegally are blurred. The attitude towards these (pro-governemnt) groups has been permissive and we are now seeing how they overextend their reach into the political sphere”, says Rocio San Miguel, president of Citizen’s Control, an NGO that monitors human rights and the armed forces.