The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has committed systematic human rights violations including killings and torture amounting to crimes against humanity, U. N. investigators said in a report on Wednesday.

Reasonable grounds existed to believe that Maduro and his interior and defence ministers ordered or contributed to the crimes documented in the report to silence opposition, the investigators said.

Specifically they had information indicating Maduro ordered the director of the national intelligence service SEBIN to detain opponents "without judicial order", Francisco Cox of the U. N. Fact-Finding Mission told a news briefing.

The report was based on more than 270 interviews with victims, witnesses, former officials and lawyers, and confidential documents.

They included the former head of the National Intelligence Service, General Christopher Figuera, whose testimony was corroborated, the report said.

Most unlawful executions by security forces and state agents have not been prosecuted in Venezuela, where the rule of law and democratic institutions have broken down, the investigators said.

They said other national jurisdictions and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which opened a preliminary examination into Venezuela in 2018, should consider prosecutions.









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