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Thursday, Nov 29, 2012 1:15 AM UTC

Venezuela judge on trial refuses to enter court

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Topics: From the Wires,

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan authorities began trying the country’s most famous judge in absentia Wednesday while she refused to enter the courtroom alleging violations of her rights.

Coming nearly three years after her arrest, the trial of Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni started amid a scandal generated by her report in a new book that she was raped while imprisoned in 2010.

She is charged with corruption and allowing a jailed banker to escape. The judge maintains she is innocent.

Afiuni’s case has drawn condemnation from international human rights groups due to President Hugo Chavez’s involvement in the case.

She infuriated Chavez in 2009 when she freed a banker from prison while he was awaiting trial on charges of flouting Venezuela’s currency exchange controls. A day after Afiuni’s arrest, Chavez said on television that she should face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Afiuni refused to enter the courtroom Wednesday as she had many other times before, arguing that her rights have been violated and that judges have mishandled the case. She stayed outside guarded by National Guard soldiers, wearing a violet shirt and jeans and sitting with a calm expression.

Afiuni revealed in a book released last week by Venezuelan journalist Francisco Olivares that she was raped in the infirmary of a women’s prison where she was being held in 2010. She said she was 47 at the time, and that she became pregnant. After that, she said, “I didn’t stop bleeding.”

“After that episode was when I got sick and they removed my uterus,” Afiuni is quoted as saying in the book. In February 2011, she was granted house arrest due to health problems.

The government’s minister of prisons, Iris Varela, rejected the judge’s account Wednesday, calling it a “vile lie.”

“I’m the one who’s most interested in having this situation investigated and cleared up,” Varela said. “All of this comes from a strategy to sell a book.”

More By Fabiola Sanchez.

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