The attorney general of Venezuela, , presented his resignation this Wednesday after nine years in office. Along with Saab, the Ombudsman, Alfredo Ruiz, has also resigned. The resignation letters arrived in the afternoon to the National Assembly, which quickly named temporary replacements and created a committee to choose the name of the permanent ones. The changes are part of the shock that caused at the beginning of last January.
The resignations follow a judicial reform ordered by the president, Delcy Rodríguez. And it has made it clear that justice was used to persecute thousands of people for political reasons. In a quick vote, Larry Devoe was appointed as the prosecutor in charge. He is the current secretary of the National Human Rights Council and is part of the Democratic Coexistence and Peace Program. He is very close to the president and her brother Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Assembly. Saab has been allowed to play extra time and was appointed ombudsman in charge.
Both decisions did not have the vote of the opponents. In addition, a parliamentary group was appointed that must begin the application process for the two positions that must be appointed within a month. The Constitution states that civil society actors should be incorporated into this commission.
Saab had been ratified in 2024 for seven more years, after the presidential elections of that year. He had served as a prosecutor since 2017, when he was irregularly appointed by the National Constituent Assembly, the counterpower that Nicolás Maduro created to confront the opposition that then had the majority in Parliament.
Saab had to fill the vacancy of one of the great defections that Chavismo was experiencing at that time, that of the prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz, who for years and then with Maduro, but who at that time deviated from the decisions made by the Supreme Court to block the legislative power controlled by the opposition. Saab was governor and deputy for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and had already been an ombudsman between 2014 and 2017. He was part of the movement that brought Chávez to the presidency in 1998, after being pardoned for the coup d’état and the military rebellions of 1992.
Saab is one of the highest leaders of Chavismo, accused by victims and NGOs of being the executor of the persecution of opposition leaders. He ordered the arrests, for example, of Edmundo González and the leader María Corina Machado, whom he has designated as a “fugitive” from justice. During his time at the Public Ministry, the file for human rights violations investigated by the International Criminal Court has grown. The ombudsman, Alfredo Ruiz, for his part, has been denounced for his omissions to protect the rights of Venezuelans.
The amnesty process has revealed the role that the justice system has played in the repressive system. In less than a week, after the approval of the amnesty law, more than 3,000 full freedoms have been granted to people who had judicial restrictions due to political cases and nearly 200 have been released from prison, raising the total number to more than 600. Most of the releases were the responsibility of the Public Ministry headed by Saab, while dozens of victims and lawyers have encountered obstacles in the courts to file their amnesty requests.
