Venezuela’s Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) announced Thursday that it has summoned, for the third time, for Friday, the standard-bearer of the main opposition coalition, Edmundo González Urrutia, as part of an investigation against him related to the accusation of electoral fraud made by the anti-Chavez movement.
“Edmundo González Urrutia has been summoned for the third time to appear before the Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday,” the institution said in a post on Instagram, where it published the summons.
The Prosecutor’s Office warned that if he does not appear again on the indicated date, “a corresponding arrest warrant will be issued” considering that he “is in the presence of a risk of flight.”
The investigation against González Urrutia is related to the publication of a website, in which the anti-Chavez group claims to have uploaded “83.5% of the electoral records” collected by witnesses and members of the table on the night of the election, to support its claim of fraud in the presidential elections of July 28, according to the MP.
The largest opposition bloc, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), released these records, which the Executive calls “false,” after the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner of the elections, which has been questioned by numerous countries, some of which support that González Urrutia won by a wide margin.
The Prosecutor’s Office therefore summoned the PUD standard-bearer – initially for last Monday and, when he did not attend, summoned him for Tuesday, which he also did not show up for – for “the alleged commission of the crimes of usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobedience of the law, computer crimes, criminal association and conspiracy.”
On Wednesday, Attorney General Tarek William Saab explained that Venezuelan law allows a person to be summoned up to three times.
“There is a third summons that we are going to send him. There are three, according to the jurisprudence of the Criminal Court. A person can be summoned up to three times to, in this case, in his capacity as an investigated person, give a statement about an ongoing process (…) that also links disobedience to the law,” said Saab in statements to the media.
Last Sunday, through a video posted on social media, the former ambassador said that the MP “intends to subject him to an interview without specifying the condition under which he is expected to appear and pre-qualifying crimes that he did not commit.”
In his opinion, the Attorney General “has repeatedly behaved like a political accuser,” since – he asserted – “he condemns in advance and now promotes a summons without guarantees of independence and due process.” EFE
#Venezuelan #prosecutor #summons #González #Urrutia #time
