Published at: 09/04/2025 08:00 PM

(LA EXTRA, April 6, 1963)

• During the last year of the government of Rómulo Betancourt, on April 5, 1963, Palm Sunday, Ali José Paredes Yéspica, a student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), was assassinated inside his house.
• Paredes Yéspica was shot by officials from the General Police Directorate (Digepol) and the Armed Forces Intelligence Service (SIFA).
• Upon opening the door of their home, located in the El Conde Urbanization, Ali José Paredes demanded a search warrant and was shot several times in response. While on the floor, the officials kicked and butted him with a machine gun.
• All this bloody spectacle took place in the presence of her mother Trina Yéspica de Paredes and her three sisters Elba, Carmen and Doris Paredes Yéspica.
• Not happy with it and in the sight of his neighbors, they took him out to the street, seated him against a wall on the sidewalk and left him to bleed out for four hours.
• Around midnight, when the agents thought he was dead, they took him to the Red Cross Hospital where the medical staff, seeing that he was still alive, proceeded to operate on him as an emergency, giving him blood transfusions. However, he died in the operating room.
• The executioners then kidnapped his sisters Elba, Carmen and Doris, who were locked in the Digepol basements, located in the Las Brisas building in Los Chaguaramos.
• For several months, the entire Paredes Yéspica family was the victim of harassment, harassment, intimidating actions and imprisonment by Digepol and SIFA agents.
• Among the thugs identified as Ali José's killers were Captain Carlos Vegas, Marcos Antonio Sabino Pérez, Fidias Sarmiento, José Izaguirre, “Mike” González, Régulo Martínez, Carlos Farrera, Ali Ruíz and Mario Segundo Leal.
• The above-mentioned agents were from the immediate environment and trusted by the then Minister of Internal Relations, Carlos Andrés Pérez, from whom they received direct instructions.
• The following day, given the press coverage of the horrendous act of blood and on expedited orders from the above-mentioned minister, the circulation of the Clarín newspaper was banned.
• The headlines about the crime and the cover photo of the victim's mother upset the police minister so much that Clarín's offices, workshops and printing press were raided and the newspaper was taken out of circulation for several weeks.
• Alí José Paredes Yéspica, 24, was a student of Economics at the UCV, a member of the Youth of the PCV and had been arrested three times before being brutally murdered
• He was born in Mérida on October 1, 1940, where he studied elementary school, then came to Caracas where he finished high school. He then went on to study at the Faculty of Economics of the UCV. He was the son of Colonel (r) Antonio Paredes Pulgar and Trina Yéspica de Paredes.

Mazo News Team