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The Valencia Massacre - While they were sleeping, nine workers were shot down by elite officials of the GATO squad (ELNACIONAL, April 20, 1975)

Published at: 24/04/2024 09:00 PM

  • At 2:00am, on April 19, 1975, a pension was robbed, located at 96-35 Páez Street, near the 5 de Julio neighborhood of the city of Valencia, edo. Carabobo.
  • Officials of the PTJ's GATO group violently entered the house where the workers were staying and killed nine of them, in what became, to date, the police procedure with the highest number of murders in the country's history.
  • The criminal search turned into a scandal when it became known that some of the deceased had bullets in the soles of their feet, implying that they shot in while the unwary pensioners were lying down.
  • Initially, it was pointed out that the victims were undocumented criminals of Colombian nationality. During the procedure, those massacred were robbed of their identity documents and personal belongings and planted a batch of weapons. Their identities, for a long time, disappeared from the records of the typing offices.
  • Later, it was discovered that the so-called “highly dangerous undocumented immigrants” were nine humble Venezuelans who shared a room in a workers' hostel.
  • Identified, all the victims and their perpetrators, the trial rotated from court to court, until finally, five years later, he settled in Caracas.
  • This was due to the fact that the criminal record was combined with that of the Carmona Case, because the same police officers were involved in the murder of the well-known criminal lawyer Ramón Carmona Vásquez.
  • The Operational Tactical Support Group (GATO) was a death squad created during the first administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979), attached to the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ).
  • It achieved notoriety due to the accusations made by the renowned criminologist, of Trujillo origin, Ramón Carmona, regarding the destruction of the traces of the aircraft in which Renny Ottolina and his electoral campaign team died.
  • The destruction of the wrecked plane, without prior investigations to clarify the case, was one of the keys to determining that Ottolina was the victim of an attack.
  • Coincidentally, Diego Arria launched his presidential candidacy the same day that Renny had been removed from the road to Miraflores, his victory was imminent and threatened to break the bipartisan continuity.
  • The de facto application of the death penalty by the governments of the Fourth Republic was a practice inherited by the successors of the government of Rómulo Betancourt, and persisted until the repeal of the Constitution of 1961, following the entry into force of the current Bolivarian Constitution, approved by a popular referendum on December 15, 1999, which put an end to this vicious police practice.

Mazo News Team