Lorent Saleh, a former political prisoner who has been living in exile since his release on October 12 of this year, gave a talk today in which he provided some details on his four years in regime detention.
Speaking from Madrid, where he now resides, Saleh said that a regime official by the name of Katherine Harrington personally ordered and supervised the torture that he endured while in detention.
When attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz was in her office in Caracas, Katherine Harrington personally directed the torture. She personally went [to the SEBIN headquarters where Saleh was held] to direct and order how I was to be pressured.
Saleh said that Harrington was a common sight in La Tumba for months
Saleh also said that the point of the torture was to force him to falsely incriminate opposition political leaders like Antonio Ledezma. He also said that he was not the only political prisoner to suffer that fate:
I was not the only one who was tortured by order of Katherine Harrington.
Until today, Harrington served in a position directly under attorney general Tarek William Saab. In a move likely unrelated to Saleh’s comments, Harrington was removed from her position today.
Until today, Harrington had enjoyed a lengthy career in the Maduro regime’s legal repression apparatus. During her career at the Public Ministry, Harrington brought fraudulent charges against a number of politically-persecuted persons, including Maria Corina Machado, Antonio Ledezma, and Gaby Arellano.
Harrington’s prolific work won her the attention of the U.S. government, and she was placed on a sanctions list in March 2015 for her alleged role in human rights violations in Venezuela.
VP Pence Claims Maduro Connection to Migrant Caravan
In an interview with Washington Post reporter Robert Costa today, U.S. vice president Mike Pence said that the migrant caravan headed to the U.S. from Central America is being financed by the Maduro regime.
Pence claims that the information came directly to him from Juan Orlando Hernández, the President of Honduras.
What the President of Honduras told me [was that the caravan was] organized by leftists groups in Honduras, financed by Venezuela and sent north to challenge our sovereignty and challenge our border.
The comment appears in the video below, starting at the 1:00 mark:
As of the writing of this update, there is no official comment from the Honduran government on what President Hernandez may have told Pence, or what evidence he might have for the claim.
In recent days, the White House has used the news that a migrant caravan made up of approximately 7,000 people is headed to the United States as a tactic to stoke fear among voters ahead of the midterm elections.
President Trump has used the existence of the caravan to spread racist lies about the individuals that make it up, claiming, for example, that it contains “unknown Middle Easterners” and that it is a threat to the country’s national security.
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