The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) called on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to immediately release journalist Víctor Manuel García Hidalgo, editor and director of news portal Informe Cifras, who has been incarcerated since March 1 at the petty crimes prison Yare III, accused of civic rebellion.
Venezuela's prosecutor's office accuses García Hidalgo of allegedly participating in the April 11, 2002 coup d'etat against then President Hugo Chávez. As evidence against the journalist, authorities are relying on his documented opinions on the incident and a photograph where García Hidalgo appears with lieutenant-colonel Francisco Arias Cárdenas -- an opponent of Chávez -- taken from the inside of the Army's General Command Headquarters.
García Hidalgo's wife and legal counsel, Antonieta Lava de García, said in an interview with newspaper La razón that her husband was there as a journalist and argued that the case was part of a harassment and intimidation campaign from the government.
Claudio Paolillo, president of IAPA's Freedom of the Press and Information Commission, called on Venezuela to "guarantee [García Hidalgo's] rights to physical integrity, equality before the law and due process.”
The lack of clarity regarding the accusations against García Hidalgo, his detention and the place where he is being held, as well as his reputation as a dissident, are issues IAPA has underscored regarding this case.
For instance, Paolillo said he was skeptical of the way authorities have handled the case by incarcerating García Hidalgo in a prison for petty crimes, given the political nature of the crimes he's being accused of. García Hidalgo is in grave danger being locked up with seven petty crime suspects in a 16-square-meter cell, he said. He also suffers from several ailments and has not received proper medical attention.
Venezuela's Public Ministry has called for a sentence of 14 to 24 years in prison for the journalist, who is considered President Maduro's first political prisoner, according to a report on Venezuelan political prisoners from non-profit Fundepro (Foundation for Due Process).
"Commander Arias Cárdenas and I were both at the Army's General Command Headquarters on April 11, 2002; now they call him governor and they call me 'coup leader.' When in reality all I did was to promote Bolivarian thought when I was president of the Bolivarian Youth foundation and now I defend freedom of expression through the news portal Informecifras.com," García Hidalgo told journalist Guido Briceño with Global TV before being detained, according to the same report.
Delsa Solórzano, a Venezuelan congresswoman with the center-left political party Un Nuevo Tiempo, recently said at a press conference that something irregular happened with García Hidalgo's case when he was trialed for the crime of civic rebellion, since "he is protected by the Amnesty Law Decree of Dec. 31, 2007, which was signed by deceased President Hugo Chávez, voiding the causes for which he is being processed." Solórzano also called the Maduro administration to seize the political persecution against García Hidalgo.
“If Chávez were alive, my husband would not be behind bars,” said Antonieta Lava de García in an interview with newspaper La Razón published by Fundepro in July this year.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
