Attorney General says Venezuela crackdown helped avert 'civil war'

Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek William Saab defended the state's crackdown on opposition supporters after disputed July elections, telling AFP the authorities' actions helped avert a "civil war."

The proclamation of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election triggered widespread protests.

The opposition, which had been tipped by polls for an easy win, had published detailed polling-station-level results which showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.

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Twenty-eight people, including two police officers,  were killed and 200 injured in the unrest, during which around 2,400 people were arrested.

'Premeditated' unrest

Saab claimed the violence that marred the protests had been "premeditated."

"There was an attempt to trigger a civil war," he said.

"The plan consisted in claiming there was fraud to generate a terrorist act. If we had not acted as we did at that moment Venezuela would have been gripped by civil war," he told AFP in an interview Monday at his office in Caracas.

He denied the security forces had any responsibility for the deaths of demonstrators.

A September 4 report into the killings by Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed the finger at Venezuelan security forces and pro-government militias known as "colectivos" in some of the deaths.

One of the victims was a 15-year-old boy, Isaias Jacob Fuenmayor Gonzalez, who sustained a gunshot to the neck while taking part in a protest in Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-biggest city, according to HRW.

Detainees 'not political prisoners'

Saab, whose office walls are lined with portraits of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, late Venezuelan socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, his late Cuban ally Fidel Castro and Maduro, denied allegations his office was under Maduro's thumb.

Appointed attorney general in 2017, he was re-elected to the position earlier this month by a parliament stacked with Maduro loyalists.

He cited among his achievements increased investment in community policing and 600 convictions handed down to police officers for human rights violations.

He also pointed to nearly 22,000 convictions for corruption under his watch and claimed to have dismantled "34 corruption systems" at graft-ridden state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela.

Five of the last eight oil ministers are in prison or fled the country.

Saab claimed that during the post-election violence "around 500" buildings, including schools, clinics and town halls were damaged by protesters.

He denied that those detained were political prisoners, accusing them of "trying to burn" and "shooting at" demonstrators, without providing any evidence of his claim.

"A political prisoner is someone who has been detained because of his political ideas and who uses peaceful tactics... These people took weapons to (try to) overthrow a legitimately constituted government," he accused.

The opposition says many of those arrested were arbitrarily arrested.

Venezuela's Foro Penal rights NGO says some 1,800 people remain behind bars over two months later, including 69 teenagers.

Saab denied that children were being held, but said that the law allowed for the arrest of minors aged between 14 and 17.

He refused to be drawn on how many protesters were still in custody, saying only that "many have been freed."

And he denied claims by the families of some of the prisoners that their loved ones had been tortured.

Only a handful of countries, including Russia, have recognized Maduro's claim to have won a third six-year term.

But opposition protests have largely petered out since September when Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Saab said the 75-year-old former diplomat would be "automatically detained" if he returned to Venezuela.

Saab also said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since the election, was under investigation but refused to say whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest.