Relatives from Elio Mendoza, a supervisor at the plant of the Orinoco Iron and Steel Company –Sidor in Spanish-, denounced that the man gets arresting by agents with the Military Counterintelligence Agency -Dgcim, the acronym in Spanish- on the night of Wednesday, April 1st, for having sent that Whatsapp message.
Mendoza was calling by Sidor’s plant manager to perform a night shift on the 1st of April, because a breakdown at the plant, and he was needed at the company. It was his day off, but he went anyway.
“The plant manager, Francis Villega, called and told him that they send a truck to look for him. He left on Wednesday at 10:17 pm, and was the last time we saw him,” explained the worker’s sister, Carla Mendoza.
His relatives did not hear from him until Thursday, April 2, at 1:00 pm, when they allowed him to call his wife, telling her that he was under arrest, at the Puerto Ordaz Dgcim headquarters for resending a Whatsapp message.
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The message that Mendoza allegedly sent referring to the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Maikel Moreno, in which he is identified as a member of the band Los Enanos band, a criminal group linked to Los Soles Cartel, the Venezuelan drug trafficking organization the U.S is trying to dismantle.
Mendoza is 53 years old with hypertensive cardiopathy sickness, and officers have not allowed him to visit, give him his medicines, or talk with his lawyers.
“The only thing they have told us is that he is arrest for resending that message, we didn´t know that it was a crime to resend a Whatapp message. We don’t know about his physical or mental conditions, we don’t know anything,” his sister said.
Mendoza’s family demands that they are allowing to see him, as well as his lawyers, to have access to talk to him and to the legal file to find out the real reasons for his detention.
Mendoza was presenting in the court in the afternoon, accusing him of instigation to hate and defamation against the president of the Supreme Court of Justice.
