At the resumption of his trial yesterday, Leopoldo Lopez made a series of fiery remarks before the judge Susana Barreiros.
One of Leopoldo’s lawyer, Juan Carlos Gutierrez, accused the judge of being partial to the government side, after she allowed mislabelled government evidence to be admitted into the trail, a highly irregular move.
The controversy comes from the fact that the identification number of some of the physical evidence presented by the government at the preliminary trial did not match the same evidence presented at the actual trial. Also, a chemical analysis of cloth and glass fragments was incorrectly labelled as biological evidence, even thought it is considered chemical evidence.
Leopoldo’s lawyers argued that the lapses were a result of the fact that the judge admitted every single piece of evidence presented against Lopez without examining it. On the other hand, the judge carefully examined every piece of evidence presented by the defence, rejecting every single piece except the testimony of an opposition organizer.
The defence argued that admitting evidence with a different identification number and classification from what was presented at the preliminary trial is essentially the same thing as presenting new evidence.
At the unfairness of the scrutiny, another defence lawyer, Carlos Garcia Guevara, said:
You’ve told us non-stop that you cannot accept any evidence that was not presented at the preliminary trial. How is it that you’re now allowing improperly-prepared evidence by the Attorney General?
Lopez Files Complaint Against Maduro, Others
During the trial, Lopez announced that he had filed a complaint with the Public Ministry against Maduro, Minister of the Interior Miguel Rodriguez Torres, and the ex-director of the SEBIN, Manuel Martinez. Lopez claims that the three men are responsible for the deaths of Bassil Da Costa and Juan Montoya, who were killed during the violence in Caracas on February 12.
Lopez pointed out that the two men accused of killing Da Costa, Jonathan Duarte and Andry Lopez, worked at the time as assistant and escort (respectively) to Minister Torres.
At some point during the day yesterday, Lopez was able to record some of his comments. In the clip below, (followed by my translation), Lopez argues that the violent deaths that occurred on February 12 precede the events at the Public Ministry, for which he is on trial. To Lopez, it makes no sense that he’s being tried for violent acts, if the most violent acts of the day – and its perpetrators – are being essentially ignored by the government.
Now, it’s regrettable, sad, that we have today six officers from the Public Ministry [accused of murder], that we have Venezuelan youth under arrest who aren’t even 20 years old, who’ve been submitted to torture. Even today, we haven’t heard anything about what really set off the violence and the deaths on February 12. It’s unbelievable and surprising that the Public Ministry hasn’t talked about Bassil Da Costa, or of “Juancho” Montoya. To them, they never existed. These Venezuelans died. And during a case that has to do with February 12 [his own], it’s like they didn’t exist. These deaths occurred before anything took place at the Public Ministry.
Lopez admitted that the complaint is going to land in a saco roto [literally, “a broken bag”; akin to, “this complaint will go nowhere], but that he nevertheless wanted to make it in order to prove a point.
Corn Flour Price Will Increase
The price of harina P.A.N. [corn flour], a staple of Venezuelan kitchens, is set to be increase in early November, so says Pablo Baraybar, the director of Polar Commercial Foods, a main producer of the product.
According to Baraybar, the price increase comes as a result of a 218% increase in the price of white corn imposed upon the industry by the government recently. Baraybar attended a meeting along with the Minister of Agriculture and Land and the Minister of Nutrition, who assured him that the price increase would be “proportional” to the one the industry was forced to accept.
Baraybar also stressed that the current stock of corn is enough to last for 40 days, and that he hopes that his company will be able to buy new raw materials at the new prices without any trouble.
He also assured the press that his company is working at 100% capacity, saying:
We work every day of the year in four complete shifts to produce 50 million kilograms of harina P.A.N. each month. We even increased our production capacity at the Chivacoa plant, to 42 million additional kilograms per year. But, we’ve also pointed out that we need an adequate price that recognizes the increase in cost for acquiring our raw materials.
The corn flour industry estimates that the new price in stores for its product should be Bs. 24.5 per kilogram.
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