Clooney Foundation sues Venezuela over human rights abuses 

The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Argentina claiming that Venezuelan authorities are committing crimes against humanity. 

According to the lawsuit, Venezuelan security forces are guilty of international crimes, including torture, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, and sometimes even execution of political opponents since 2014.

“We are talking about arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions,” said Ignacio Jovtis, a lawyer with the Clooney Foundation, which was founded by actor George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. 

“These are not isolated cases. The cases we are presenting are illustrative of ones that we have been documenting for years.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two families whose relatives had been targeted and subjected to “indiscriminate violence and killings” by the regime. 

“The Venezuelan justice system is failing victims of mass atrocities in their fight for justice,” said Yasmine Chubin, Legal Advocacy Director at CFJ’s The Docket. “This is why we are assisting survivors and their families in gathering evidence of the crimes committed against them and seeking alternative jurisdictions to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are held accountable.”

CFJ and other human rights organizations are urging Argentinian courts to prosecute the case under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows countries to prosecute serious crimes regardless of where they have been committed.

“The titanic efforts of the victims to obtain truth, justice, and reparation, in the face of the impunity prevailing in Venezuela, with the invaluable support of organizations such as the Clooney Foundation for Justice, must not fall on deaf ears,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at the human rights organization Amnesty International, said in a press release.

The lawsuit comes days after the International Criminal Court opened an office in Venezuela this week amid a probe for possible crimes against humanity in the South American country.