Published at: 04/12/2024 10:00 PM

(WHAT... is happening in Venezuela? , December 12, 1965)

• On December 4, 1965, the labor leader Juan Bautista Sánchez, 52, was arrested by a commission of the General Directorate of Police (Digepol), which raided his house in the city of El Tigre, edo, without a court order. Anzoategui.
• Juan Bautista was pushed out of his house, and without any explanation he was taken to an unknown place. Hours later, the same Digepoles who arrested him, visibly nervous, showed up at the house of the victim's relatives announcing that they could go and claim the body from the hospital.
• Juan Bautista Sánchez's murderous agents tried to obtain a search ballot to legalize the crime committed. However, District Judge Simon Rodriguez del edo. Anzoátegui, Manuel Martínez Gago, flatly refused to issue it, arguing that he would not become an accomplice to the crime or sign the search slip, after the act of blood had occurred.
• The Minister of Internal Relations, Gonzalo Barrios, and his police assassins declared that it was “an extremist invention to discredit the constitutional government.” But the facts, always clear and in response to reality, proved quite the opposite.
• Every day, during the Raúl Leoni administration, Digepol tortured, harassed, raided without a court order, fabricated false evidence and murdered “suspects” and arbitrarily arrested politicians.
• The unusual news of the violent arrest and treacherous murder of Juan Bautista Sánchez sparked indignation in the humble neighborhood where he lived, as well as in the popular sectors and workplaces where he worked.

Mazo News Team