Arena Space

Originally published here

This is one of the saddest posts I have ever written

El Nacional reports that four bodies believed to be those of the Faddoul brothers were found in the town of Yare today. Two of the bodies had the T-shirt of the school attended by the brothers…in later news it has been confirmed that it is indeed the Faddoul brother’s bodies.

The three Venezuelan-Canadian kids, ages 12, 13 and 17, were kidnapped with their driver when they were taken to school on February 23. According to witnesses, the car with the kids was stopped and then escorted by several police officers in motorcycle. The 13 year old was said to have a physical disability. A ransom of 4.5 million dollars was asked for the release of the kids. The Government of Canada had contacted and pressured the Venezuelan government about the case, but said that had received minimal information.

This crime reminds me of last week abduction and immediate killing of Venezuelan-Italian businessman Filippo Sindoni, the successful owner of a pasta empire, a TV station and a newspaper. In this case, the car carrying Sindoni was also stopped by what looked like Police officers.

So Chacon just said that he hopes that this case is not given a political bias. But, what is going on, Minister Chacon? How can you explain those kidnappings? It looks like too many police officers involved in those cases…and what have you been doing about the personal safety of Venezuelans all these years? Why so many kidnappings and killings?

I would also like to get Vice President José Vicente Rangel’s version for those cases .

This is not a film to “falsify the truth" Mr. Vice President (1), these horrible kidnapping and killings are for real. This is the true state of affairs in Venezuela, where there is no personal safety and where the justice and police system seem to be in place just to persecute the government political opponents, but not to protect its citizens.

Jorge Arena

(1) Referring to JVR comments about the film "Secuestro Express".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update note.- Daniel also wrote about the story here and showed a n image that appeared TODAY in El Nacional. A propaganda by mayor Juan Barreto to justify the creation of a sort of armed neighbouring seceurity forces, which in my view further pursues the militarization of the civil society. Was it bad timing or Barreto was purposedly exploiting the death
of the Faddoul brothers to promote this new type of popular brigades? Note that the bodies were found before 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Here is the link to the infamous add.