[News] Venezuela - Washington-backed coupster Carlos Ortega sentenced

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=47403
Published: Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Bylined to: <mailto:news.desk at vheadline.com>David Coleman

Washington-backed coupster Carlos Ortega finally nailed ... gets 15 
years and 11 months behind bars ... vows to continue fighting 
democracy from prison cell!

VHeadline correspondent David Coleman writes: Corrupt union boss and 
coupster Carlos Ortega has been sentenced to 15 years and 11 months 
in prison.  The former Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) 
boss was sentenced today by a Caracas court for his role in the 2-day 
coup in April 2002 which saw business leader, Pedro Carmona Estanga 
seize power to immediately dissolve all forms of democracy with 
financial and logistic connivance of Washington D.C.

[]

Above: Saddam Hussein?  No!  It's Carlos Ortega bang to rights in his cell!

UPDATE NEWS:  Caracas Metropolitan 9th Judicial Circuit Judge 
Milagros Morales has today sentenced Carlos Ortega to precisely 15 
years, 11 months, 5 days and 20 hours prison to be served at the Ramo 
Verde National Penitentiary in Los Teques.  Ortega has five days in 
which to appeal the sentence.  The disgraced union mafia boss and 
coupster was detained last February 28 in disguise and bearing false 
documents ... he at first denied his true identity.  He was charged 
with Civil Rebellion and Incitement to Delinquency under Article 144 
(subsection 286 and 322) of the Penal Code.  Judge Morales heard 
seven hours of oral testimony culminating a process which has seen 
6th National Public Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz present 34 witnesses 
in six previous hearings.  In court today, Ortega insisted that the 
charges brought against him were "purely political, no evidence on 
which I can be convicted!"  He claims that he is now a personal 
political prisoner of President Hugo Chavez Frias and says he will 
appeal to international courts of justice if his forthcoming appeal 
fails in the Venezuelan court system.

[]

The disgraced union mafia boss is hauled to court earlier today!

Dictator for a Day Pedro Carmona Estanga is currently in exile in 
Bogota after having slunk away from the luxury house arrest under 
which he had been placed after President Hugo Chavez Frias had been 
returned to power by the overwhelming will of the common people.

[]
Ortega, who had headed a politicized trade union mafia, also fled the 
country in the aftermath of his co-conspirators' demise and was 
granted asylum in Costa Rica.  He had openly incited against the 
government in a crippling 2-month stoppage that saw Venezuela's 
revenue-earning oil industry virtually at a standstill.  He found 
then himself in trouble again, in Costa Rica and was told, 
diplomatically, to leave after it he refused to observe the terms of 
his asylum and continued plotting against the democratically-elected 
government in Caracas.  Unable to find safe haven with his backers in 
the Bush administration, he returned to Caracas under false identity 
but was detained when he was discovered drunk and disorderly in a 
gambling den in the opposition's east Caracas stronghold.

[]
Ortega is, however, just one of several hundred other business and 
political conspirators who threw their bags in with Dictator for a 
Day Pedro Carmona Estanga and saw the nation's congress dissolved, 
the 1999 Constitution thrown out with the bathwater and the judiciary 
sent packing.  Charges of civil rebellion and sabotage have been made 
against many opposition leaders who supported the coup and attempting 
to wreck the economy.

Just a week ago the disloyal opposition had withdrawn from National 
Assembly (AN) elections at the last minute in an attempt to disavow 
Venezuela's nascent democracy but, in fact, handed a government 
majority to President Hugo Chavez Frias to continue his peaceful 
Bolivarian Revolution which has steadily got to grips with endemic 
corruption and lawlessness despite opposition filibustering in 
previous parliaments.

Amazingly, defiant Ortega claims he will continue to work against the 
government from behind prison bars ... he told heavily opposition 
biased Globovision TV news  "I'll keep fighting to preserve the 
freedom, democracy and unity of the people ... I'm no conspirator or 
coup plotter and I didn't betray my country."

[]



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