Andean Group - 8 March 2005

Fugitive union leader Carlos Ortega was arrested in Caracas in late February after two years on the run, and has been formally charged with offences related to the two-month strike-lockout he helped organise and lead in late 2002, which had the declared aim of forcing President Hugo Chávez to resign. He is the latest of several opposition figures against whom the government has recently instituted court proceedings.

Ortega, one of the leaders of the 2002 coup against Chávez and the mastermind of three other general strikes against him, sought asylum in Costa Rica when the charges were first brought against him. The Costa Rican government rescinded the asylum grant a year later, after Ortega repeatedly breached its terms by calling for the ouster of Chávez . The former secretary-general of the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV) let it be known that he was going underground to organise the 'resistance' to Chávez .

It now transpires that he slipped back into Venezuela in August last year, just before the recall referendum against Chávez . The police say they picked up his trail four months ago: they had found him living openly, albeit with his appearance changed and using another identity, in Caracas. At the time of his arrest on 28 February he was indulging in his favourite pastime, gambling, in a discotheque-bingo establishment.

It is worth noting that the Caracas judge before which he was brought threw out three of the charges filed by the public prosecution service: treason, criminal conspiracy and devastation. He committed Ortega to stand trial for the other three: rebellion, incitement to commit crimes and use of a false document.

On 1 March the public prosecution service announced that it was indicting Enrique Mendoza, former governor of Miranda state, for his part in the 2002 coup, namely, taking the state television channel VTV off the air. Another prosecution announced that day was that of television presenter Napoleón Bravo, charged with 'incitement to hatred' against José Vicente Rangel Seijó, mayor of Sucre (and grandson of the Vice-President). The complaint filed by Rangel says that Bravo's broadcasting a purported plan to target pro-Chávez personalities was tantamount to incitement. Neither of these cases has been been admitted to court.

Shortly before Ortega's arrest, a public prosecutor had requested the arrest of former President Carlos Andrés Pérez on charges related to his responsibility for ordering the preparation and implementation of Plan Avila, an emergency military deployment scheme used to repress the riots of 27-28 February 1989 that came to be known as the caracazo. About 300 people are estimated to have been killed during those events.

It was the use of the military to quell those riots that provided one of the declared motives for then-Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chávez to stage his bloody, abortive coup of February 1992 against Pérez. The former president, now 83, is a sworn foe of the present government who has several times called for its ouster. He currently commutes between the Dominican Republic and the US, which means that an extradition request would have to be filed. This assumes that the case will be accepted in court and the supreme court will find merit in an extradition application. All told, the government is currently investigating about 400 people suspected of having committed criminal offences during the 2002 coup and the 2003 strike-lockout.