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Dickey BS: Chavez moves against second TV channel (164* d) RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV channel 07 Jun 07


"..Although arrested by a different police force, the experience of eighteen-year-old high-school student Asdrúbal Joaquín Rojas Monteverde was similar. Rojas was arrested on March 1 in Maripérez, Caracas, by armed officers of the military police. He told Human Rights Watch that his mother had sent him to buy some cell-phone cards. He was on his way to buy them accompanied by two friends (one of them a minor), when they were stopped by the military police. Rojas told Human Rights Watch:

      The military police took us to the Plaza Venezuela, where they put us in a truck. They beat me with their helmets, especially on my left arm. They sprinkled powder from a tear gas can over my eyes. It stung like crazy. Then they threw a tear gas bomb into the truck. I took a deep breath and held my breath as long as I could, but then I was breathing pure gas. I was suffocating…the police did nothing to help us, but I beat against the canvas sides of the truck and managed to find an opening. I was able to breathe air again. After this, the officers made me appear in front of the television cameras in the Plaza Venezuela and say that I had received the money I was carrying from the Acción Democrática as payment for participating in the protests. They threatened to beat me more if I refused.
      
      The truck then took us to the military police headquarters in Fuerte Tiuna, where they continued to mistreat me. They gave me electric shocks five times from a baton that they carry (one of them also used it when he arrested me). It made my muscles contract from the effect of the electricity, and then my whole body started trembling.

Rojas' mother, Ivette Monteverde de Rojas, told Human Rights Watch that she saw bruises on his neck and his shoulder when she visited him on the following day.

Rojas was released conditionally on March 25 after being held for more than three weeks in the military police's 35th regiment headquarters in San José de San Martín, Fuerte Tiuna. He was charged with illegal assembly, obstruction of the street, resisting authority, and possession of inflammable substances. He was required to sign in every fifteen days at the courts until his case was heard. Rojas told Human Rights Watch after his release that he had never participated in the protests, which he didn't agree with..."

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/12/venezu8423.htm


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