By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Jun 21 1996 (IPS)

It is not only in the United States where police brutality has been caught by the video cameras. In Caracas this week, a TV videotape showed alleged criminals handcuffed in a police vehicle – then the same suspects lying dead in a hospital morgue.

This evidence has led authorities to initiate an investigation.

The incident occurred on Monday, after Police thwarted an armed robbery of an ice cream parlor in Caracas. A woman police officer and one of the would-be thieves died in the incident and police managed to make two arrests. One of the accused had a cut on his shoulder when he was removed from the scene, the other was unharmed. Both their bodies, however, had multiple bullet wounds by the time they reached hospital where they were dead on arrival.

The Metropolitan Police issued a press release on Wednesday saying they had allowed the Judicial Technical Police to interview the officers who had taken the detainees to hospital. Attorney General, Ivan Badell, has assigned two prosecutors to investigate the case which was revealed by Radio Television Caracas.

The Police Commander, General Rafael Bustillos, said the force would not tolerate “attempts against the fundamental rights of the people, even at times of great pain (as when one of their members dies).”

The death of 26 year-old officer Rosario Martinez marked the first time a female officer had died in the line of duty. Merchants and neighbors of the area in which the incident occurred, held a rally Thursday to protest the lack of security in the central Sabana Grande Avenue.

Officer Martinez was not wearing a bullet-proof vest when she responded to the armed robbery call as such equipment is in short supply because of budget problems.

The private television station that broke the news of the death in custody of the robbers said after the program the station had received threatening phone calls and police vehicles circled the building.

The incident highlighted complaints from Human rights organizations that killings by security personnel (police and military) are on the rise in Venezuela.

Raul Cubas, coordinator of the human rights organization Provea, declared that between October 1994 and September last year there were 126 deaths in incidents that involved police personnel. Of those, 46 were “unofficial” killings – reported as occurring after confrontation between criminals and the police. Later investigations proved that some of the dead were either passers-by or citizens without criminal records.

Cubas considered it vital that the media present a different version from the official one.

“We have to break the culture of impunity,” said Cubas.

Back in late 1994, the daily El Nacional showed a photograph of a youth handcuffed in a police vehicle. He later appeared dead. The official version was that there had been a confrontation between the youth and police. Further investigations confirmed the youth did not have a criminal record.

Amnesty International in its annual report released this week, states that despite the increase in reports of unofficial executions, there haven’t been any convictions of police or military personnel for nearly two years. Cubas also criticized members of government who accuse humanitarian organizations of being defenders of criminals or condoning these police actions.

After this week’s incident, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Burelli said that in Venezuela “there was no official intention of violating human dignity.”

He added, however, that when police were accused of mistreatreating a criminal who had, for example, “robbed, kidnapped and raped in a poor area there is an appeal to respect human rights, but that man has not respected the rights of a whole neighborhood.”

Only last weekend Nigel Rodley – the United Nations’ special envoy and expert on torture – concluded a visit to Venezuela. In three months he is scheduled to deliver a report about the allegations of human rights abuses in Venezuela.

Burelli said that the invitation to make this visit, like the one Amnesty International made in 1995, responds “to Venezuela’s commitment to international organizations that protect human rights.”

Venezuela eleminated the death penalty in 1863. At present, this country of 22 million inhabitants, is enduring a crime wave – blamed in part on the economic crisis – which includes about 5,000 hommicides each year.

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