nsnbc : Venezuela’s ouster Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz and her husband German Ferrer fled the country and arrived in the Colombian capital Bogota Friday afternoon.
Luisa Ortega Diaz and her husband German Ferrer arrived in Bogotá aboard a private plane travelling to Aruba, reported Colombian migration authorities. The couple had, as of Friday afternoon, reportedly not asked for asylum in Colombia.
Ortega and Ferrer have both been supporters of Venezuela’s ruling socialist party (PSUV) and President Nicolas Maduro. Ortega and her husband broke with the PSUV administration of President Maduro over the Supreme Court’s suspension of the National Assembly, the push to supersede the legislative branch with a now fully PSUV controlled Constituent Assembly, and the push for rewriting the 1999 Constitution adopted under the late President Hugo Chavez.
One of the newly formed Constituent Assembly’s first acts was to remove Ortega and appoint one of Maduro’s key allies, Tarek William Saab, as Attorney General. On Thursday, the PSUV-stacked Supreme Court ordered Ferrer placed under arrest, a day after Saab accused him of orchestrating a $6 million extortion ring that allegedly occurred under Ortega’s watch. Ferrer denied the accusations and many believe they are politically motivated.
In June, the Supreme Court barred Ortega from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen as part of its investigation into a complaint filed by a pro-government lawmaker that accused her of acting as an opposition leader and requested a probe into her “mental insanity.” Ortega and Ferrer reportedly fled in a speed boat to Aruba, which lies a short distance off the northern coast of Venezuela.
The couple’s whereabouts had been unknown for several days, but earlier Friday Ortega surfaced briefly, addressing by phone a gathering of Latin America’s prosecutors in Mexico. Ortega told the region’s prosecutors that Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly $100 million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. In a plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department last year, the company admitted paying bribes to officials throughout Latin America in exchange for lucrative contracts.
Ortega denounced the government takeover of the prosecutor’s offices and said many of her colleagues have faced persecution. She first spoke out against Maduro in late March following a Supreme Court decision to suspend the National Assembly where the Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition held an absolute majority. The Supreme Court then usurped the powers of the legislative branch of government until the PSUV-stacked Constituent Assembly had superseded it. The MUD boycotted the election and challenges its results. One of Ortega’s last acts in office was to challenge the results of the elections accusing the PSUV of vote manipulation.
Ortega also pointed at “irregularities” in the appointment of some Supreme Court Justices and tried to file criminal charges against others, for among others, crimes against the republic. The Supreme Court responded by issuing a decree according to which Ortega and her office would need approval from a sitting judge before criminal charges could be filed.
Ortega denounced recent developments in Venezuela as a “rupture” of the constitutional order. Maduro and his allies have frequently lashed out against Ortega, accusing her of being part of an opposition effort to overthrow Maduro. Diosdado Cabello, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist party, has repeatedly referred to her as the “traitor prosecutor.”
CH/L – nsnbc 18.08.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/08/19/ousted-venezuelan-attorney-general-luisa-ortega-fled-to-colombia/
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