MARIA ISOLIETT IGLESIAS EL UNIVERSAL - [full text] The Altamira Plaza activist who was illegally arrested on Friday October 31 octubre, was found as if by magic by CICPC agents, Thursday 11:00 pm in Valencia.
According to the police report by Silvio Daniel Mérida Ortiz, he was taken by his captors to a hut near Valencia, where he was forced to sit at gunpoint until the arrival of the CICPC Immediate Rescue Unit who rescued him but did not make any arrests.
Between torture and hoods
Silvio Daniel Mérida Ortiz was captured, illegally, on Friday October 31 by civilians who arrived at Block 7 in the El Silencio [district] executing a police raid. Since that day, until Thursday November 6, he was held somewhere [outside Caracas].
During this week he was victim of constant torture. He was hung for 12 continuous hours by his wrists, they put a cigarette out on his skin, they whipped his back, applied electric shock to his feet, and shoved his head into a toilet, in order to make him reveal, according to his attorneys Guillermo Heredia and Rigoberto Quintero, if he had any knowledge of ties between the Altamira military dissidents and bombs detonated at diplomatic facilities, and possible insurrection by the opposition.
Place and date
The reason for the liberation of Mérida Ortiz is questionable and still has no coherent answer.
The actions by police following the rescue have arroused questions. They interrogated him two hours after finding him, without his lawyers present, he slept cuffed to the legs of his cell bunk, and the forensic report made [in Valencia] made no mention of physical damage, but according to his mother... where, at the hearing to present charges, they could not even put the handcuffs on him "because his wrists were lacerated". [end]
The decision was a blow to a program that President Hugo Chávez has hailed as a cornerstone of his professed ''revolution'' for Venezuela's poor majority. The program is one of several initiatives into which the government has poured millions of dollars ahead of a possible recall referendum on Chávez's rule next year.
The ruling was a victory for Venezuela's medical establishment, which argues the so-called ''Inside the Slum'' program violates laws requiring foreign doctors to pass equivalency exams before practicing here. Chávez's political foes claim the program seeks to indoctrinate the poor with socialist ideals, charges the government denies.
Former Health Minister María Urbaneja and Freddy Bernal, the mayor of the Caracas district where most of the Cuban doctors work, had challenged the lower court's Aug. 21 decision to suspend the program until about 1,000 Cuban doctors working in Caracas take equivalency exams.
The Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal, arguing neither official was qualified to file cases in representation of collective interests, according to a statement released by the Supreme Court. [end]