Four Remain Missing in Venezuela

Alejandra Blanco doesn’t know what to say when her four young children ask her where their father is.

The family screamed when soldiers stormed into their home, fired bullets into the furniture, ransacked the house and hauled off her husband, Oscar. That was Dec. 21, 1999--the height of chaotic rescue efforts after flooding killed thousands in the northern state of Vargas--and Oscar Blanco and three other people seized that day haven’t been seen since.

Police were trying to restore order after looting broke out in the flood-ravaged Caribbean state. But the four disappearances have become a cause for activists to accuse populist President Hugo Chavez’s government of ignoring human rights violations committed by his police and soldiers.

“Right now whoever is responsible for the disappearances feels immune and feels like they can mock the law,” said Liliana Ortega, director of the human rights group Cofavic.

Also missing are Jose Rivas, Antonio Monasterio and Roberto Hernandez.

Hernandez was watching television with his elderly uncle, Carlos Paz, when two policemen entered their brick shack and dragged the young man away by the neck.

Ordered to remain inside, Paz said he heard a gunshot and his nephew scream, “Man, you’ve shot me.” The old man said he heard a vehicle drive away and then the sound of another gunshot in the distance.

“And that was it. Robertico has disappeared to this day,” the white-bearded Paz said, holding a mug shot of his nephew.

Chavez--a former army paratrooper who led a failed coup in 1992, then won election as president in 1998--initially denied military involvement. He accused human rights groups and the media of trying to smear his reputation.

But when witnesses corroborated the incidents, Chavez recanted and even visited the families, promising he “would not rest” until justice was done. More than a year later, relatives are still waiting.

Ortega alleges security officials used the flood emergency to engineer a “cleansing” of people with criminal backgrounds. All four men had police records of offenses ranging from drug abuse to theft. None was committing a crime when arrested, the witnesses say.

Marino Alvarado, a lawyer for the rights group Provea, said he received 174 allegations of summary executions by police last year.

Venezuela’s secret police, known as Disip, says it has no record of the men’s arrest. Yet police Lt. Federico Ventura and Sgt. Adrian Carrasquel have confessed to arresting Blanco and Monasterio and handing them over to Disip, confirming Alejandra Blanco’s version of events.

Taking their cases abroad, Ortega, Alvarado and lawyers representing Rivas’ family have asked the Inter American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States to investigate. Those cases are pending.

Venezuela’s newly appointed attorney general, Isaias Rodriguez, promised in January to file charges against two soldiers and four Disip members in the disappearances of Blanco and Monasterio.

“Rodriguez’s words are positive, but we have to see it to believe it,” Ortega said. She noted that Rodriguez didn’t say when charges would be filed and that he also has said he doesn’t know what happened to Blanco and Monasterio.

Disip Director Eliezer Otaiza refused in August to hand over a photo album of officers patrolling Vargas on the day of the men’s arrest, said Provea’s Alvarado, who is representing Hernandez’s family.

Otaiza later handed over the photo albums on a presidential order. But the four Disip officials whom police officers have identified from photographs refuse to appear for court-ordered identification lineups.

The attorney general’s office has said nothing about the disappearances of Hernandez and Rivas.

Aleidi Hernandez, Roberto Hernandez’s younger sister, refuses to abandon hope.

Twice when Chavez visited Vargas last year, she pushed through the crowds to remind the president of the promise he made to her personally to push the investigation. Chavez assured her he had not forgotten, she said.

“What I want is for my brother to reappear alive,” she said. “But being realistic . . . I just want the Disip assassins to be punished for what they did.”