Caracas, Thursday
February 7,2013

Latin American Herald Tribune

CARACAS – Venezuela’s interior minister said Monday that he ordered the director of the CICPC investigative police to personally take charge of the probe into the murder of the son of prominent opposition figure Claudio Fermin.

“We deeply regret the death of Dr. Claudio Fermin’s son. The investigation will get to the bottom of what happened...we have designated the CICPC director himself,” Nestor Reverol said on Twitter.

The opposition leader told reporters that his son Alejandro, 34, was slain shortly before dawn in an apparent attempted car theft.

Several leaders of the MUD opposition coalition blamed President Hugo Chavez’s government for the country’s crime problem while expressing their condolences to Fermin.

“Necrophiles of the opposition are already beginning to appear, politicizing this terrible incident. We are all of us responsible for security together,” Minister Reverol tweeted.

The Chavez government has made “great efforts” to fight crime in Miranda state, which has jurisdiction over the Caracas area where Fermin was murdered.

Miranda’s governor is Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in the Oct. 7 election.

Venezuela has one of the highest rates of citizen insecurity in Latin America, with an average of 50 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants.