Maduro is denounced in the US for alleged extrajudicial executions

A group of five Venezuelan citizens filed a complaint against Nicolás Maduro for alleged extrajudicial executions of six of his family members between 2017 and 2021, according to the complaint filed on Tuesday (30) in a federal court in the Eastern District of New York.

The complaint alleges that the executions were carried out by the Faes (Special Action Forces), an elite group of the Bolivarian National Police under the command of Maduro.

According to the document, which does not reveal the names of the complainants or their families, five of the victims were young people, and the sixth was a teenager. They would have been killed by members of the Fae in their homes or nearby.

The complaint adds that the Faes were created by Maduro in 2017 to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, but that the then dictator used them "as a political instrument and mechanism of social control to violently repress dissent, terrorize low-income neighborhoods and eliminate political opposition."

"Indeed, the Fae are widely considered a 'death squad' or 'killing squad,'" the text states.

Although the complaint focuses on six cases for which the complainants seek compensation, it also claims that Faes was responsible for at least 1,300 deaths between 2017 and 2020, although some non-governmental organizations estimate the number could be even higher.

CNN has contacted Maduro's lawyers in the United States for comment and is awaiting a response.

Other accusations of executions against Maduro
This is not the first time that Maduro has been accused of extrajudicial executions and other alleged human rights violations during his rule of Venezuela, which began in 2013, after the death of Hugo Chávez.

In September 2019, the UN Human Rights Council established an independent international mission to investigate and assess possible human rights violations in Venezuela since 2014.

The mission's conclusions, published in December 2015, state that "there are plausible reasons to believe that the President, the Ministers of Interior and Defense, and other senior military and political officials, including the high command of the Bolivarian National Guard, can be held responsible for ordering or otherwise contributing to the commission of the crimes documented in this report."

"Although these senior officials had the effective capacity to adopt preventive and repressive measures, they did not do so," the report adds.

Maduro and other senior officials have repeatedly denied that Venezuelan authorities have committed human rights violations such as those documented by the Mission and civil society organizations.

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Source: CNN