© GOVERNMENT OF VENEZUELA
GOVERNMENT OF VENEZUELA – Archive
MADRID, 17 (EUROPA PRESS)
The head of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, has rejected this Thursday the reports published a day earlier in which it is ensured that the businessman Alex Saab, alleged figurehead of President Nicolás Maduro, has acted as a confidant of the United States Anti-Drug Agency (DEA) and has denounced that he suffered “savage” torture during his detention in Cape Verde.
“Now they take this out of Alex Saab, if that is the case, why did they remove his teeth by savagely beating him there in Cape Verde, why was he tortured, why are they keeping him in inhumane conditions in a prison?” Rodríguez said at a press conference held. at the seat of the Venezuelan Parliament.
Rodríguez has questioned this possibility, since “the United States knows very well how it treats its spies.” It would be “strange”, he has said, if Saab had collaborated with the DEA considering that he was “savagely tortured”.
Rodríguez’s words are Venezuela’s response to the material declassified by the judge of the Southern District of Florida, Robert Scola, responsible for the case once morest Saab for a crime of conspiracy to launder money, in which it is ensured that the Colombian-Venezuelan businessman he would have collaborated with the DEA for at least a year before being arrested in June 2020 in Cape Verde.
Until now, this information had not been revealed due to the possibility that doing so would put the life of Saab’s wife, Camilla Fabri, at risk. However, Judge Scola decided to declassify her following the woman refused to leave Venezuela and the United States assistance services.
For his part, Saab, through his lawyer, David Kivkin, wanted to clarify “in the strongest possible way” that any interaction he had with the Department of Justice and other US authorities was made with “the full knowledge and support” of Venezuela.
In that sense, “the sole purpose” of those meetings “was to confirm that neither he nor the companies associated with him had done anything wrong” and has criticized the use that has been made of this disclosure, since “it is nothing more than an attempt of harming the interests of Venezuela” and “the solidity of the relationship” that it maintains with this country,
“Alex Saab remains a loyal citizen and diplomat of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and will never do anything that harms the interests of the country and the people who have given him so much,” the statement read.