Prosecutors accuse opposition leader Gilber Caro of ordering post-election “riots”

Caracas, Aug 15 (EFE).- Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab, On Thursday, he accused former opposition deputy Gilber Caro of asking several ‘pranes’ – prison leaders – to find people “with weapons” and cause “disturbances” in the streets.in reference to the protests that broke out against the official result of the presidential elections, which confirmed Nicolás Maduro as re-elected president.

“Who do you think the link was? He was a murderer, the right-hand man at the time of Leopoldo López (exiled opponent) and (his wife) Lilian Tintori,” said Saab in reference to Caro, who, according to testimonies shown by the prosecutor, promised to help the ‘pranes’ when he became “Penitentiary Minister.”

In a broadcast on state channel VTV, Saab showed videos of several prisoners who claimed to have been contacted by Caro, who, they said, two days before the July 28 elections, said that she “needed people” to cause “vandalism” in the streets, all “financed” by “the team” of opposition leader “María Corina Machado and Leopoldo López.”

The former deputy and several ‘pranes’, Saab continued, talked about how “the actions were going to be” after “a bloodbath” on July 29 and 30, when the Prosecutor’s Office recorded the majority of the 25 deaths during protests, for which, in addition, there are more than 2,400 people arrested, according to the authorities.

In this regard, the prosecutor stated that, after the verdict of the electoral body, “a wave of instrumentalized violence was unleashed (…) by the so-called comanditos” – the political organization groups of the campaign of the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia – who – he said – “used people with criminal records”, whom they “previously drugged” to “burn” several sites and “bathe the country in blood.”

He also explained that the Prosecutor’s Office “has detained a very significant number of convicted and confessed individuals” who were accused of the crimes of “homicide qualified with treachery and frivolous motives, illegal possession of a firearm, criminal association and terrorism.”

On Tuesday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, denounced “the high and continued number of arbitrary arrests” and the “disproportionate use” of force reported following protests against the official result of the presidential election, claims rejected by the government.

For their part, the anti-Chavez movement has called for “an end to the persecution” and the release of those arrested for protesting against the official results of the elections, in which the largest opposition coalition claims that its standard-bearer, González Urrutia, won, after gathering “83.5%” of the votes that – they insist – demonstrate this victory.