Venezuelan regime arrests Caracas mayor, for "subversion"

Venezuelan security forces arrested on 19 February one of the country's leading opponents, the mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma, whom President Nicolás Maduro accused immediately of involvement in subversive plots. A "massive" group of policemen and security agents were reported to have broken into Ledezma's office and "hit" him before leading him away without letting him speak, Radio France Internationale cited his wife as saying. President Maduro had in recent days cited arrests in the armed forces for unspecified plotting, and reportedly accused Ledezma of connivence, in the latest of a string of such charges since he became president in 2013. On 19 February he said Mr Ledezma was using his position as mayor to "seek violence, coup plotting and destabilization." He said many opposition politicians did the same - "a mayor here, a governor there or a member of parliament" - to plot against the state and sabotage the economy, and warned subversives would go to court, the official AVN agency reported. The arrest came close to the anniversary of the arrest of another opponent closely connected to Ledezma, Leopoldo López. Two former regional presidents, Sebastián Piñera of Chile and Andrés Pastrana of Colombia, who have sought to have Mr López freed, denounced the latest arrest. Piñera called it "brutal, illegal and abusive," Venezuela's El Nacional reported, citing his Twitter account. A spokesman for the US State Department also rejected Maduro's charges that the United States was sabotating Venezuela's economy; Venezuela's economic problemss were the fruit of its government's policies, CNN quoted spokeswoman Jen Psaki as saying.

Homicides said at "alarming" levels in Venezuela

Venezuela's El Universal newspaper gave on 7 March the figure of 2,841 homicides across Venezuela for the first two months of 2014, citing unofficial and unspecified sources of the state criminal investigation agency CICPC. The daily observed this was 265 criminal killings more than the 2,576 reported for the same months in 2013. Venezuela and its capital have some of the world's highest crime rates, though the Government has increasingly restricted the revelation of crime statistics. The newspaper 2001 reported on 8 March that "at least" 92 bodies had been taken to the main Caracas morgue, Bello Monte, in the first seven days of March. The figure is taken as an indicator of the number of criminal or violent deaths occurring in the Caracas Metropolitan District.

Venezuelan opponent held as "peaceful" crowds gather in Caracas

Venezuelan authorities arrested a prominent opponent in Caracas on 18 February over his alleged involvement in violent incidents during recent anti-Government protests, and after he surrendered to troops in one of the capital's public squares, media reported. Leopoldo López, head of the opposition Voluntad Popular party, has rejected all wrongdoing and denounced the country's "unjust" judiciary before a crowd of sympathisers. Pictures by those present indicated that a very large crowd came out to witness the arrest and express support. He was taken away in an armoured van, apparently to a prison outside the capital, Globovisión and the daily El Universal reported. Politicians in the crowd included the former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles and the legislator Maria Corina Machado. Mr Capriles said then that the opposition's demands for change were fair and should be expressed through peaceful protests; "let's not allow the Government or infiltrators to...tarnish a just demand," the broadcaster Globovisión showed him saying. El Universal separately reported a postponement of a parliamentary session that day, which was scheduled to debate removing Ms Machado's parliamentary immunity. The daily reported another march that day by Government supporters who headed toward the Miraflores presidential palace, where they were to hear a speech by President Nicolás Maduro.

Over 200 killed in Caracas in fortnight

The principal morgue in Caracas was reported to have received 210 bodies in 2014 up to midday on 16 January, or roughly 12 a day and including seven policemen, Venezuela's El Universal reported, confirming the city's reputation as one of the world's deadliest. Caracas was recently cited as the world's second most dangerous city in 2013, with a murder rate of over 134 killings per 100,000 inhabitants. Insecurity has become a chief point of dispute between the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro and liberal opposition forces, and reportedly one of the reasons why many Venezuelans were emigrating. President Maduro urged political actors on 17 January to exclude security from politics, saying it was "criminal" to make "economic and political capital" out of people's grief, El Universal reported. He urged state governors and mayors to join the Government's efforts to curb crime but also to help change a pervasive media culture, which he said "adulated" drugs and violence. The opposition he alleged, had engaged in a policy of "throwing stones" at his government, but he also denounced the "death statistics" or polls that publicised crime rates in the country. The Mexican NGO Citizens Council for Public Security and Penal Justice recently reported 4,364 criminal killings in 2013 in Caracas, which has just under 3.248 million residents.

Venezuelans comment interim presidency's legality

Constitutional lawyers and opposition politicians pointed out on 7 March that Venezuela's acting president Nicolás Maduro Moros, who many expect will seek election as successor to Hugo Chávez, could not legally and simultaneously be acting president, Vice-President and presidential candidate. Elections were expected within a month but a jurist told the broadcaster Globovisión on 7 March that these may be postponed by days or weeks. Juan Manuel Rafalli told Globovisión that to run for the presidency Maduro would either have to appoint a vice-president or the Supreme Court would have to make a pertinent ruling. It was perhaps unlikely that the court, which had stated nothing so far, would make an obstructive ruling. Certain opposition politicians observed earlier that the parliamentary speaker should legally have taken over the interim presidency with the President's "absolute" absence, and parliament should have convened an extraordinary session. On this the jurist Gerardo Blyde told the daily El Nacional that Article 33 of the constitution permitted the Executive Vice-President to "take charge" of the presidency if the President was no longer in office, interpreting this as distinct from "becoming president," Europa Press reported. He said this meant he remained Vice-President while exercising presidential duties and that pursuant to the Constitution's Article 229 could not also be a candidate. The opposition Table of Democratic Unity (Mesa de Unidad Democrática, MUD) observed separately that election laws prevented Maduro from running for the presidency as an acting rather than an elected president. That law they stated required public servants running for an elected office to resign their positions from the first day of the campaign, Europa Press reported. A member of the MUD secretariat Ramón José Medina said in turn that the opposition agreed elections could be held 45 or 60 days after the presidential demise rather than 30, given conditions, Globovisión and EFE reported on 7 March. Three names Medina cited as possible presidential aspirants for the MUD coalition were Henrique Capriles Radonsky, the candidate who failed to win the presidency in October 2012, the mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma and the legislator María Corina Machado.

Hugo Chávez returns to Venezuela, taken to hospital

Venezuela's ailing President Hugo Chávez Frías returned to Caracas early on 18 February after weeks of treatment and care in Cuba following surgery for cancer on 11 December; he was taken to a military hospital for further rest and care, the Venezuelan state news agency reported. The return was announced by a comment appearing on the president's personal page on the website Twitter. Chávez thanked Cuba and its two leaders, President Raul Castro and his brother Fidel Castro, for their hospitality but also Venezuelans for "so much love;" he assured them "I am holding onto Christ and keep my trust in my doctors and nurses." The country's acting leader Vice-President Nicolás Maduro Moros, called Chávez an example of a "permanent battle" and urged Venezuelans to pray for him "with the heart," the agency reported. The president's absence has fuelled political tensions between the socialist government and liberal opposition parties, which have criticized the lack of clear information on the president's health and the prolongation of a de facto regime. The leading opposition politician and governor of the northern state of Miranda also wrote on Twitter that he hoped the president's return was permanent and would prompt his government to start working to solve Venezuela's problems, El Nacional reported on 18 February. He wrote that he hoped the return of Chávez would end the "red package" or economic policies opposition forces allege are being dictated from communist Cuba.

Over 530 were killed in Caracas in December 2012

The Bello Monte forensic facility in Caracas was reported to have received 15 bodies - of presumed victims of criminal incidents in the capital - in the 12 hours from six in the evening on 30 December to six in the morning the next day, the broadcaster Globovisión reported on 31 December. It qualified the figures given by the morgue as unofficial but the movement of bodies into the morgue is reported in Venezuelan media and apparently considered a daily gauge of the state of violence in Caracas, which has the highest homicide rate in Venezuela. Citing the morgue's figures, Globovisión gave 532 as the number of violent deaths in Caracas in December 2012.

Body saw violent crimes increase in Venezuela

All manner of crimes increased in Venezuela in 2012 according to the private body Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia, which estimated in its latest report a total of 21,692 killings in 2012 or homicide rate of 73 per 100,000 inhabitants, Colombia's RCN La Radio reported on 27 December. The body's director told RCN radio that the figure represented an eight to 10-per-cent increase compared to 2011. The Observatorio concluded in its 2012 report that Venezuela was now one of the most violent of countries, in spite of "valuable" measures taken by the socialist government to curb crime. Its director Roberto Briceño-León said there had been a "sustained" increase in crimes since 1999 when he said Venezuela had a homicide rate of 19 per 100,000 inhabitants. He said "Venezuela is currently the most violent state in Latin America...a position of dubious honour it shares with Honduras, to some extent with El Salvador, but it has been a process of continuous growth when this has diminished in Colombia." A summary of its report cited the Venezuelan states with the highest homicide rates as the Capital District including Caracas, with 122/100,000 followed by the state of Miranda with 100/100,000 and Aragua south-west of Caracas with 92. The lowest homicide rates were seen in the southern and western states of Amazonas and Mérida, with 42 and 41/100,000. The report observed however that violence had spread to all parts of Venezuela; "killings increased in houses and on the streets. Assassinations have become the means of committing crimes against property, a mechanism for resolving personal disputes or between neighbours and a form of implementing private justice." The body noted a "loss of respect for police authority" manifest in the figure it cited of one policeman or police official killed every day in Venezuela in 2012. Authorities it stated counted 583 kidnappings - as these were reported - but there were "thousands that are not reported. Kidnapping stopped being a crime aimed at the rich and affects middle-class and working families." Kidnappers it added, were now more competent and flexible.