The National Court rejects a complaint from the Venezuelan opposition against Zapatero

Eduardo González The Criminal Chamber of the National Court has confirmed this Tuesday the inadmissibility of the complaint filed by a group of Venezuelan individuals against the former president of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, considering that there are no “rational indications of criminality that justify the initiation of an investigation”. A group of Venezuelan opposition members had filed a complaint against Zapatero for “crimes against humanity, torture and moral integrity due to his close ties with members of the Venezuelan ruling elite and his active participation in favour of his permanence in power.” The plaintiffs accused him of having acted as a “lobbyist” for the Nicolás Maduro regime before the international community, in order to avoid its isolation and to legitimize, in his capacity as international observer, the results of the presidential elections of last July 28, in which Maduro beat the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia after a “flagrant electoral fraud.” In exchange for this support, they added, the regime allowed Zapatero to continue “profiting” through the “plundering of Venezuelan assets.” Venezuelan opposition members also accused Zapatero of colluding with the Chavista regime to violently repress the Venezuelan population through the so-called ‘Tun tun’ operation, launched by the Maduro government to eradicate protests in favor of González Urrutia. On October 18, the Central Investigative Judge number two, Ismael Moreno, decided, at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, not to admit the complaint for consideration because he considered that the criminal acts attributed to Rodríguez Zapatero were based “solely and exclusively” on information from the press and social networks, without there being “any objective data that links the defendant with the events reported by the plaintiffs.” The plaintiffs filed an appeal against the inadmissibility of the complaint, which has finally been confirmed by the magistrates of the Third Criminal Section of the National Court, as requested by the Prosecutor's Office, with the argument that "the complaint does not present rational indications of criminality that justify the initiation of an investigation against the defendant that is not prospective," according to the order made public this Tuesday. "There are no rational indications of criminality (...), since they do not arise from the fact that he appears in photographs with members of the Venezuelan Government or that he has a certain opinion on the last electoral result," warns the text. "Without questioning the qualification of the reported facts," which "are not specified (...), the appeal filed cannot be admitted because it would mean starting a prospective investigation," warns the order. The author also continues that the complaint rules out, "without apparent reason, that the activity carried out by the defendant was for humanitarian reasons or as a mediator between the Government of Venezuela and the opposition."

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