Late Thursday afternoon, guards at Venezuela’s infamous Ramo Verde military prison attempted to abduct opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez from the cramped dungeon cell in which he has been held incommunicado. Lopez refused to leave unless he was in the presence of his lawyers and a representative of the “People’s Defense,” a branch of the Venezuelan government charged with defending the rights of people in detention. While the guards attempted to remove him by force, a prison functionary blocked the cell door. Later in the evening, amidst a flurry of activity at the infamous prison, representatives of the “People’s Defense” and various high-ranking military officers arrived at Ramo Verde.There is still no word as to the current status of Mr. Lopez. His wife Lilian Tintori reports that his safety is a matter of grave concern, and she reminds the world that responsibility for any harm that should befall him lies squarely with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
The indomitable Mr. Lopez was jailed after calling for peaceful demonstrations demanding the resignation of the despot Nicolas Maduro. His wife is banned from visiting Leopoldo, but she caught a glimpse of her heroic husband at a judicial hearing Wednesday. She reports that despite the abuse he has suffered in prison, he remained in remarkably upbeat and defiant during his court appearance. Marking the one-year anniversary of Mr. Lopez’s detention, Bill Clinton yesterday called for the immediate release of Mr. Lopez and other political prisoners. Lopez studied in the United States, at the Hun School in Princeton, at Kenyon College in Ohio, and at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
This latest sinister development in the case of Leopoldo Lopez comes amidst an epidemic of outrages committed by the government of caudillo Nicolas Maduro. Yesterday, while armed guards were attempting to make Mr. Lopez “disappear” from his cell, another group of eighty hooded functionaries of SABIN, the Venezuelan secret police, descended on the Caracas offices of opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma. The mayor was beaten and detained as the secret police broke down doors and fired into the air. No charges have been forthcoming. The detention of Mr. Ledezma has been denounced by former Chilean president Sebastian Pinera, and by Jesus Torrealba, the secretary general of the main Venezuelan opposition coalition, who notes that the government has opted for violence and seeks to outlaw political opposition. Mr. Torrealba insists that this effort to suppress the democratic opposition will fail. Another opposition figure, the mayor of the Venezuelan municipality of Sucre, Carlos Ocariz, reported yesterday that there are at least 33 opposition mayors under investigation by the SABIN secret police.
With the Venezuelan regime acting to foreclose the opposition on so many fronts it is easy to become distracted from the very specific and deadly peril that faces Leopoldo Lopez, alone in a dank oubliette in the fetid bowels of Nicolas Maduro’s Ramo Verde prison. Let’s not be distracted. Venezuela is going to need Mr. Lopez alive when it wakes up from the nightmare of Nicolas Maduro’s rule by cudgel.
