(Caracas) Venezuela on Monday rejected the conclusions of a report by UN experts claiming that its intelligence services are committing crimes against humanity as part of a policy decided at the top of the state.
Posted at 2:03 p.m.
“Venezuela expresses its most categorical rejection of the false and unfounded accusations made by the so-called international mission,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, calling the report a “pamphlet.”
Presented last week in Geneva, this report by the UN independent fact-finding mission on Venezuela accuses the military counterintelligence services (DGCIM) and the national intelligence service (SEBIN) of committing “serious and human rights violations […] including acts of torture and sexual violence” to “suppress dissent in the country”.
According to its findings, there is a chain of command in “the execution of a plan orchestrated by President Nicolas Maduro and other senior officials to suppress opposition to the government”.
Venezuela considers that this “new pseudo-report” lacks “methodological basis” and intends “to continue to attack Venezuelan institutions […] as part of the criminal strategy of regime change “promoted by the United States” with the complicity of its satellite governments around the world.
The mission, created in 2019 and which has already presented two annual reports highlighting human rights violations, does not have the right to visit the country and had to conduct its investigation from the border regions and through remote interviews.
The International Criminal Court is to open an office in Venezuela as part of its investigation into possible human rights violations during the crackdown on anti-government protests in 2017 that left around 100 people dead.