Venezuela: Maduro’s regime proposed incorporating Alex Saab into peace negotiations in Mexico

The President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, proposed on Tuesday the incorporation of the special envoy of the regime of Nicolás Maduro, Alex Saab, to the negotiating table with the opposition and Mexico, in a new maneuver to try to avoid his extradition to the United States.

In statements from the Federal Legislative Palace, Rodriguez also reported that they want Saab be a member of the National Social Care Board.

Alex Saab, ironhead of the Venezuelan dictator, is detained in Cape Verde.

“He is abducted in violation of the Vienna Convention because he is a duly accredited diplomat“Without an arrest warrant being weighed on him, without the right to due process,” Rodriguez said.

They will notify you soon Norway, Russia and the Netherlands on the decision to include it in the negotiating table.

The arrest of Alex Saab

The Ironhead, 49, is waiting for the Constitutional Court of Cape Verde, the highest court in the country, to rule on his extradition in response to appeals filed for the alleged “unconstitutionality” of his arrest.

Saab was arrested on June 12, 2020 when its plane made a stopover to refuel at Amilcar Cabral International Airport on Salt Island, in response to a request from the United States. sued through Interpol for alleged money laundering offenses, but the defense alleges that this alert was issued after the arrest.

After his arrest, Venezuela has stressed that Saab is a Venezuelan citizen and a government “agent”“That was”in transit“In Cape Verde, so his lawyers argue that”he was entitled to personal inviolability as a special envoy of Venezuela”.

The businessman’s name appeared in the media when former Venezuelan prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz accused him in 2017 of being one of the Venezuelan president’s ringleaders.

Saab, born in the Colombian city of Barranquilla and of Lebanese origin, is related to several companies, including Group Grand Limited (GGL), accused of supplying overpriced food and groceries to the Maduro Administration.

According to the US, the businessman-three stepchildren of Maduro profited from these operations with “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Dialogue for peace

The negotiations, promoted by Norway, will resume in a third stage from September 24 to 27 in Mexico, where they have negotiated from a first visit from 13 to 15 August, when they signed a memorandum of understanding to agree on a common agenda.

Gerardo Blyde, the leader of the opposition negotiators, said that the issue of democratic reinstitutionality in Venezuela will be discussed with a view to having a “Sovereign independent judicial system that can decide without political interference.”

He also stated that: “There is no democracy in Venezuela,” so he insisted that if a rapid separation of powers is not achieved, “not even economic growth will be possible.”

With this process, in which Mexico participates as a facilitator, opposition demands “free” elections in the regional elections of the 21 of November, whereas the dictator Nicholas Maduro tries that the international sanctions rise.

Despite the advances, Blyde pointed out to the press that in the framework of the talks agreements will be reached “slowly” and after discussing the issues “in depth”, so they should not feed “false expectations”.

“We have not yet entered the point of all the political prisoners in Venezuela, or exiled, or persecuted, it is an issue on the agenda. When we talk about the return of rights is the number 1 item on the agenda.”, Argued the lawyer.

The antecedent of the FARC and Simón Trinitat

This is not the first time such a request has been made. In 2012, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) appointed guerrilla Simon Trinidad as part of the negotiating team in peace talks with the government.

The head of the FARC Caribbean bloc, whose real name is Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda, was the first senior member of the guerrillas to be captured. In 2004, he was arrested in Quito, Ecuador, from where he was extradited to Colombia to face murder and kidnapping charges.. That same year he was extradited to the United States, where in 2008 he was sentenced to 60 years in prison for participating in the abduction of three Americans in 2003.

Despite being in prison, the FARC appointed him as one of its delegates in the open peace process with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos.

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