Former Venezuelan deputy Juan Requesens sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of attempting to assassinate Maduro

Venezuelan president assures that the country is still “on a fighting footing”

Former Venezuelan opposition deputy Juan Requesens was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison for conspiring to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in 2018, his lawyer, Joel Garcia, said.

“At this hour leaving the trial hearing of Juan Requesens who was sentenced to 8 years for the crime of conspiracy. In the next hours I will meet with his family for further actions. We will continue informing,” García said in a message through his Twitter account.

Maduro, for his part, has asserted that four years after the day “in which the enemies attempted against the peace of Venezuela, we are still firm, united, aware and standing up for the struggle”, as he has indicated in a message disseminated through Twitter.

Requesens was released from prison in August 2020 after spending more than two years in prison for his alleged involvement in the alleged attempt perpetrated in 2018 against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but had to remain under house arrest.

The Venezuelan opposition figure was arrested on August 7, 2018 by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) and was subsequently stripped of his parliamentary immunity by the National Constituent Assembly.

The Government then released a video in which Requesens appeared, admitting to have helped the alleged material author of the failed assassination attempt to cross the border to Colombia. On August 4, 2018, a drone exploded at a distance of between 100 and 200 meters from the podium where the president was giving a speech during a military parade in Caracas, authorities explained.

In addition, shortly thereafter a second drone crashed into an apartment building two blocks from where Maduro was standing. The Venezuelan opposition has denounced on numerous occasions that Requesens was arrested without respect for his parliamentary immunity. The Constituent Assembly stripped him of his immunity days after he was arrested.

Since then, both the opposition and the family have accused the Venezuelan authorities of torturing him, citing as evidence the two videos released by them as soon as he was arrested.