Venezuela's envoy suppressed a case against ETA terrorist, says witness

Venezuela's ambassador to Spain, Julián Isaías Rodríguez, allegedly ordered the suppression of a criminal case filed against an ETA member so he would not be prosecuted in Caracas, a protected witness has told the High Court in Madrid.

The incident allegedly occurred when Rodríguez served as Venezuela's attorney general, according to the witness, who is a former prosecutor in that country.

Rodríguez gave instructions that the case of the detained ETA member, who had arrived illegally in Venezuela, be transferred to a prosecutor whom he trusted on behalf of "the government's interest." From that time on, it wasn't known what had happened to the ETA terrorist, the witness explained in a written statement to High Court Judge Eloy Velasco.

Velasco is investigating alleged links between ETA and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On Monday, he charged three ETA members, including José Arturo Cubillas Fontán, a former ETA terrorist who is an agriculture official in Hugo Chávez's government, with conspiring with the FARC.

The protected witness worked for Rodríguez between 2004 and 2007 when the latter was state attorney general. The witness was also one of five commissioners appointed to investigate the murder of another prosecutor, Danilo Anderson, 38, a murky case that remains unsolved. Today the witness lives in the United States where Judge Velasco will travel to in the coming weeks to take a statement from the former Venezuelan official.

The witness describes in his letter how in 2001 he became an assistant prosecutor in Caracas, assigned to the financial crimes unit. The staff included a chief prosecutor, an assistant, a secretary and two aides, all of whose names he provided to Velasco.

His predecessor had discovered a criminal case filed against a Spaniard who was arrested at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas after he was found to have a fake passport and was carrying $5,000 in cash.

"The truth of the matter is that while conducting an inventory of criminal prosecutions in that office I discovered this case file, which was taken from me by the chief prosecutor and sent to the main headquarters of the financial crimes unit because she was going on vacation. I was told that it was a delicate matter because it dealt with an alleged member of the ETA terrorist group," wrote the ex-prosecutor.

The head of the financial crimes unit told him that the case should "be immediately brought to the attention of then-Attorney General of the Republic of Venezuela, Julián Isaías Rodríguez, who, after he found out about it, gave precise instructions (orders to suppress it) so that it would not be returned to the office. It was given to a national prosecutor who was considered very trustworthy, Mercedes Prieto, because it was a case of national interest. Since then, we never knew what happened to that criminal case filed against the Spaniard," the witness wrote.

He added that crime investigators concluded in a report that the detained Spaniard was an ETA member and had entered the country illegally.

The former prosecutor noted that Isaías assigned him to help investigate the November 2004 murder of another prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. It gave him the opportunity to have "almost daily contact with him for at least the next three years." According to his testimony, the now-ambassador told him of his political and legal position on ETA and the FARC. The witness says that he is in exile because he wouldn't accept any "manipulation" in the murder case.

Anderson was investigating the 2002 coup plot against Chávez and died when explosives were placed under his car.