By Geraldina Colotti, Resumen Latinoamericano, April 2, 2024.
Alex Saab
Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, was acquitted of all charges by Florida Judge Robert Scola. The sentence, reported by the media, followed the pardon signed by U.S. President Joseph Biden on December 15, 2023. On December 20, Saab was released after a prisoner exchange with the United States. Once back in Venezuela, he recounted the tortures he suffered to make him confess to crimes he had never committed, to make him support the idea of Venezuela as a “narco-state”, and that of Saab as a “front man for Nicolás Maduro”.
That Alex Saab was a political case was clear from the first day of the Venezuelan diplomat’s kidnapping. On June 12, 2020, he was dragged off the plane that was stopped for refueling on the island of Cape Verde. Subsequently, the U.S. government deported him from Africa to a detention center in Miami. A double kidnapping like the one applied, in defiance of international law, against “enemy combatants” after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 (the so-called redditions).
Except that, in Saab’s case, besides being illegal, for violating the Vienna Convention, this “reddition” was absolutely unmotivated, because the diplomat’s mission was a humanitarian, peacekeeping mission. As a special envoy of the Maduro government, he was returning from a trip to Iran, whose objective was to provide food, medicines and fuel to the besieged country, which U.S. imperialism wanted to strangle with coercive measures: unilateral and illegal measures.
That the case against the diplomat was a judicial set-up against the whole Bolivarian country, and that his special envoy was a hostage and a warning, was amply illustrated in the international conference “Lawfare against Venezuela. The kidnapping of Diplomat Alex Saab”, whose documents have been compiled in a book of the same title.
A video of strong repercussion, spread in several languages, entitled “Alex Saab, a kidnapped diplomat”, created by journalist Karen Méndez and with accurate testimonies such as Father Numa Molina, has allowed the world to experience first hand the cruelty of the “sanctions” imposed on Venezuela and their effects on the life of a country that, with Chávez’s victory in the elections of December 6, 1998, in a few years had reached the “millennium goals” in half the time established by the FAO.
A legal book, written by international lawyer Indhriana Parada, “The kidnapping of Alex Saab”, compiled and analyzed the documents of more than two years of investigation, which show how the kidnapping of the diplomat was a chapter of the non-conventional war launched by imperialism against Bolivarian Venezuela.
A situation that, as explained in various international conferences by two other analysts of the Alex Saab Free Movement, Fravia Marquez and Roi Lopez Rivas, served to impose a new threshold of oppression on peoples determined to be free. In fact, not only has Venezuela’s sovereignty been attacked, but an attack on international law, human rights and the principles of the United Nations Charter has been launched.
Issues also highlighted by Wilmer De Pablos, lawyer and diplomat, at the head of the movement for Saab’s release. Wilmer intervened on several occasions to denounce the political instrumentality of a legally inconsistent case, as evidenced by the fact that most of the charges against Saab were dropped in the first hearing in Miami. Only the charge of “conspiracy” remained. Therefore, the US “justice” has constantly postponed the hearing on the violation of the special envoy’s diplomatic immunity. “The United States – De Pablos has now commented – uses the legal weapon to justify the interferences and falsehoods to which they usually resort, as we see with the attacks on Venezuelan institutions that are renewed in this electoral year”.
And who were the media hitmen against the diplomat and his family became evident during the international campaign for Saab’s release, collected in the book “Alex Saab, Letters from a kidnapped man” (translated into Italian by Multimage editions), which also contains interventions by human rights activist Camilla Fabri Saab, Alex’s Italian wife.
Thanks to the journalistic work of Pedro Carvajalino, the international movement, coordinated by lawyer Laila Tajeldine, has dismantled piece by piece the toxic narrative of the war media and its main objective: to discredit the figure of the diplomat in order to discredit the Bolivarian revolution and its legitimate president – Nicolas Maduro – and thus avoid the “bad example” that he constitutes for all the peoples of the world who see in socialism the only hope for liberation.
The definitive withdrawal of all charges against Alex Saab shows how damaged is the U.S. justice system, which is capable of inventing any charge against innocent people for the simple fact of being political opponents,” Tajeldine told us. The United States has respected neither international law, nor its national laws by creating a charge against an innocent man who was carrying out a humanitarian action in Venezuela and who, we are clear, has saved the lives of millions of Venezuelans”.
Alex – added the lawyer – was always an innocent man, but the media took it upon themselves to demonize him and hide his praiseworthy action for Venezuelans. Today the world has realized how the US and the big media powers are capable of creating lies to achieve their political objectives, but time proved right and the truth prevailed. Alex was always an innocent man, a victim of the US and at the same time a fighter against the inhuman blockade against Venezuelans”.
A blockade against which Alex Saab continues to fight, engaged as president of the International Center for Productive Investments (CIIP). “Today – Alex said recently during a public event – Venezuela produces 95% of the food it consumes. It is a safe country, people are happy and confident. This was not achieved by ‘the surnames’, it was not achieved by the oligarchy, but by our president, Nicolás Maduro. A statesman who has ideals, who is loyal, who has given peace and security to the people, because he loves the people and because he belongs to the people”.