Venezuela expressed its objection on Tuesday regarding the International Criminal Court’s decision to restart an investigation into potential human rights violations that might amount to crimes against humanity by Venezuelan authorities.
Ben Emmerson, Venezuela’s legal representative, argued that the prosecution had not clearly specified which cases it was examining, making it uncertain whether they overlapped with ongoing national inquiries.
The ICC previously stated in a June ruling that Venezuela’s internal investigations did not meet the criteria for invoking the complementarity principle, which allows the court to intervene only if a country is not already investigating the same alleged crimes.
The Venezuelan government has accused political adversaries of distorting certain instances of human rights violations during President Nicolas Maduro’s tenure. Caracas maintains that it is actively probing claims of misconduct and that there have been no large-scale crimes against humanity.
In 2020, the ICC prosecutor asserted that there was a credible basis to believe that government and military officials had perpetrated crimes against humanity in Venezuela since 2017.
During 2017, protestors engaged in months-long demonstrations against the government, a period marred by allegations of torture, arbitrary detention, and mistreatment by security forces, resulting in the deaths of 125 individuals.
