THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Venezuela on Tuesday objected to a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to resume an investigation into alleged human rights abuses that could constitute crimes against humanity by Venezuelan officials.
Venezuela’s lawyer, Ben Emmerson, argued that the prosecution had not indicated clearly enough which cases it is investigating so it cannot be certain they do not overlap with national prosecutions.
In a June ruling, the ICC said that Venezuela’s own investigations were not enough to trigger the complementarity principle, where the court can only step in if a country is not already investigating the same suspected crimes.
The Venezuelan government has accused political opponents of manipulating some incidents of human rights abuses under the rule of President Nicolas Maduro. Caracas says it is already investigating claims of abuses and that large-scale crimes against humanity have not occurred.
In 2020, the ICC prosecutor said there was a reasonable basis to believe that government and military officials had committed crimes against humanity in Venezuela since 2017.
Protesters in 2017 led months of demonstrations against the government, a period marked by accusations of torture, arbitrary arrest, and abuse by security forces. The protests left 125 people dead.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; editing by Robert Birsel)
