U.S. NGO’s Case against Venezuela’s Citgo and Chavez Dismissed

A Citgo service station (archive)

Mérida, September 2nd 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - On Monday a U.S. judged dismissed a lawsuit filed against Citgo, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA. The company and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were accused of alleged terrorist acts and human rights abuses.

News service EFE reported that Judge Cecilia Altonaga granted Citgo's request to make the proceeding null and void and also closed the cases against Chavez, Vice President Ramon Carrizales, Foreign Affairs Minister Nicolas Maduro and four other officials.

The petitioner of the lawsuit against Chavez, journalist Ricardo Guanipa, failed to follow an order to notify all of the defendants. Through his lawyer he managed to notify Citgo, which responded with a request to annul the case, but not Chavez and the other officials.

EFE reports that the U.S. NGO Freedom Watch lodged the lawsuit last April on behalf of Guanipa. According to Aporrea.org, Guanipa used to work with Radio Marti, a U.S.-financed station that transmits to Cuba against the government there, and Radionexx, a private Venezuelan station that has called for the overthrow of the Chavez government and for the president's assassination.

Radionexx stopped operating at the beginning of this year, because, in the words of its operators in an interview published on Elbrollo.com, "It's useless, this country doesn't want to understand."

Guanipa claims he was forced to flee his country over alleged death threats, aggression and intimidation. He has had political asylum in the U.S. since 2005.

In the lawsuit, Freedom Watch asserted that Citgo resources were being used by Chavez to "support terrorism and other crimes against humanity, including death threats, arrests, torture, and murder." Freedom Watch was seeking US$5 billion for punitive damages.

On its website, the NGO calls Chavez a "terrorist communist dictator" and claims that he has supported the "Colombian FARC, a Marxist-Leninist group of terrorists, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Middle Eastern Arabic terrorist states and others bent on destroying Judeo-Christian and western civilization and freedom."

The organisation says it will "bring [Chavez] to justice in a Miami court for his crimes, not only to compensate his victims, but to set an example for the Obama administration."

Chavez responded to Freedom Watch's accusations in April by laughing and saying, "It's the kind of strange news that comes out everyday."