Caracas, Venezuela: Venezuelan authorities on Friday freed a judge who was arrested in 2009 after then-President Hugo Chavez objected to one of her rulings. Her case became a cause celebre for the opposition and international human rights groups.
A Caracas judge released Maria Lourdes Afiuni from house arrest so she can seek treatment for health problems, said Thelma Fernandez, an attorney for the 50-year-old magistrate widely considered Venezuela’s top political prisoner.
The ruling does not erase the charges of corruption, abuse of authority and aiding an inmate’s escape for which Chavez ordered her jailed. There was no immediate comment from the government.
Afiuni had crossed Chavez by freeing a banker accused of violating currency controls while he awaited trial. He fled the country and sought asylum in the United States.
Chavez, who died of cancer on March 5, was livid after her order.
“A judge who frees a criminal is much, much, much more serious than the criminal himself,” he said in a televised speech. “This judge should get the maximum penalty, and whoever does this — 30 years in prison! ... That judge has to pay for what she has done.”
Control over judiciary
Critics said the Afiuni case exemplified how Chavez had come to control the judiciary after increasing the size of courts and stocking them with friendly magistrates.
Although Venezuela’s government says it holds no political prisoners, Afiuni was considered such by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and noted US intellectual Noam Chomsky, an early champion of Chavez for his anti-poverty programmes.
After more than a year in a women’s prison, Afiuni was transferred to house arrest at her apartment in the capital in 2011.
In November, a court began trying her in absentia. She refused to attend, saying her rights were being violated and she didn’t recognise the court’s right to judge her.
The same month, writer Francisco Olivares published a book saying Afiuni told him she was raped in prison in 2010, became pregnant and lost the foetus.
Venezuela’s head of prisons rejected that allegation as a “vile lie.”
Chavez’s anointed successor, Nicolas Maduro, narrowly won a special election to replace him as president in April.
