(CNN Spanish) — Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced Thursday that he has requested an arrest warrant from the Justice against journalist Carla Angola for apology in the crime of assassination.
In a statement to the press, Saab said that in the audiovisual program that Angola presents on the EVTV channel in Miami, the journalist “instigated the perpetration of an assassination against President Nicolás Maduro.”
Saab cited statements by the journalist about the drone operation that killed the al Qaeda leader on Sunday as the basis for his request.
As a result of what happened with Ayman al-Zawahiri and while interviewing analyst Antonio de la Cruz, president of Inter American Trends, Angola said: “Every time the United States kills a leader of a criminal organization, the Venezuelan on social media says: ‘Why don’t they do the same with Maduro?’
Next, Angola clarified that it was not apologizing for his assassination, although it insisted that the question was valid because it compared the US action in another continent with the alleged threat posed by the presence of Iran in Venezuela.
However, Saab summoned her to mention who are the people who think that and accused her of being the one who wants such an attack to happen.
The Venezuelan attorney general explained that the Eighth Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation, that the request was made before a state court of first instance in control functions of the Criminal Judicial Circuit of the Metropolitan Area of the capital and showed the document dated Wednesday.
CNN contacted the Venezuelan journalist, who lives in Florida, to find out her reaction to the announced measure and stated that “she will not rush to respond to this new outrage,” but that she will soon do so through her lawyers.
So far neither the National Association of Journalists, nor the National Union of Press Workers of Venezuela have spoken on their social media accounts about the request of the Prosecutor’s Office.
This complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office comes hours after the former opposition deputy Juan Requesens was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of conspiracy in the case of the assassination attempt against Maduro, which occurred on August 4, 2018. Requesens’ lawyer says that your client is innocent.
More than 20 people received different sentences for the same case.
Osmary Hernandez contributed to this report.