Venezuelan Embassy Protectors hail legal victory

[Judi Lynn]

By a guest author posted on June 11, 2020

By Embassy Protectors, Popular Resistance

The following is a slightly edited statement made by the Venezuelan Embassy Protectors on June 3.

Washington, D.C. — The federal charge of “interfering with certain protective functions” levied against four members of the Embassy Protection Collective was formally dropped today in a hearing before Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell in U.S. District Court. The defendants are Adrienne Pine, David Paul, Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. They were arrested on May 16, 2019, when federal police raided the Venezuelan Embassy in violation of the Vienna Convention, which requires host countries to protect embassies and restricts them from entering without permission from the sovereign government.



Left to right: David Paul, Adrienne Pine, Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese outside the courthouse prior to the February trial.

Judge Howell sentenced the Embassy Protection Collective to no jail time. After a jury refused to convict them in February, resulting in a mistrial, the prosecutors offered to drop the federal charge and substitute a minor local misdemeanor charge of causing a disturbance. The protectors faced a year in jail and $100,000 fine each. They are now on six months of probation.

The four protectors were in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., for over a month last spring with the permission of the elected, constitutional government of Venezuela, as recognized by the United Nations and over 130 countries. The U.S. was attempting to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan government. When that failed, it took the unprecedented step of recognizing the then president of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó as president and handing Venezuela’s assets in the U.S. over to him. All this violates international law.

The Embassy Protection Collective formed in April 2019 to stop the U.S. government from illegally giving Venezuela’s main embassy in the U.S. to Guaidó’s supporters. Guaidó’s political party has little support within Venezuela and was behind violent protests in 2014 and 2017 that killed over 140 Venezuelans.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza and other members of the elected government, including President Maduro, expressed their full support for the U.S. peace activists. Many social movements within Venezuela also expressed solidarity with the protectors.

More:
https://www.workers.org/2020/06/49266/