The kidnapping of the president and his wife violates the UN Charter and international law, Tarek William Saab has told RT<\/p>\n
The US attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolas Maduro amounts to an act of war, the South American country\u2019s Attorney General Tarek William Saab has told RT.
\nAmerican forces carried out a series of airstrikes on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and several other regions of the country on January 3, while US commandos abducted Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. They were taken to a US warship and later flown to New York, where last week they appeared in court on drug-trafficking conspiracy charges. Both have pleaded not guilty.
\nIn an interview with RT Spanish aired on Wednesday, Saab called the operation an \u201cunprecedented\u201d crime of aggression that has no basis in US or international law. He argued that Washington has \u201cno criminal jurisdiction\u201d to prosecute \u201ca president, a head of state of a sovereign nation.\u201d Saab also noted that US officials have acknowledged that the so-called \u201cCartel of the Suns\u201d \u2013 a purported criminal network alleged to operate within Venezuela\u2019s security services \u2013 \u201cdoes not exist.\u201d\u00a0
\nThe prosecutor insisted that the raid and abduction violated the UN Charter, the US Constitution, and key human rights treaties. This, he said, turns Maduro into \u201ca prisoner of war whose personal and diplomatic immunity has been violated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saab claimed the real aim was to \u201cseize Venezuela\u2019s oil and natural wealth,\u201d rather than to promote democracy or fight narcotics. He argued that previous US rhetoric about Venezuelan \u201cdictatorship\u201d and regime change had \u201cfallen to pieces,\u201d and that Washington now openly admits energy is the focus.
\nFollowing Maduro\u2019s capture, US President Donald Trump said the US would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela during a transitional period and needs \u201ctotal access\u2026 to the oil and to other things in their country.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u201cThis takes us back more than 200 years, to when the Spanish Empire plundered the resources of the Americas at the cost of the lives of millions of indigenous people,\u201d Saab stated.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: US lawmakers fail in Senate to curb Trump\u2019s war powers<\/p>\n
Saab has called for \u201cabsolute, unconditional release\u201d of Maduro and Flores at a hearing scheduled for March, warning the precedent could be used against leaders \u201cin any country of Europe, Latin America, Asia or Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The kidnapping of the president and his wife violates the UN Charter and international law, Tarek William Saab has told RT The US attack on Venezuela and abduction of President…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}