The person responsible for the Yumare Massacre was sentenced to 17 years and 4 months

For the commission of the crime of qualified homicide with premeditation and treachery, for futile and ignoble reasons, in the degree of corresponding complicity, former dissip Berman José Vega was sentenced to 17 years and 4 months in prison.

Berman Vega had been detained since December 2023 for his responsibility in the Yumare Massacre, in which nine left-wing social leaders lost their lives in an execution and extermination operation perpetrated on May 8, 1986 in the La Vaca hamlet, Yaracuy state.

Attorney Victor Lopez, legal representative of the victims of the Yumare Massacre, reported that the closing hearing took place on the afternoon of Monday, October 21, at the Criminal Judicial Circuit of the state of Aragua, in the city of Maracay, where relatives of the victims and survivors of the Yumare Massacre attended.

During the hearing, the lawyers in charge of the case presented to the judge the political and legal arguments of the case, supported by the Law for Justice and Against Impunity approved in 2011, after evaluating all the evidence such as the results of the exhumations and the trajectories of the projectiles.

"Today our legal representation exposed how systematically between 1958 and 1998 the Disip, within the framework of a state terrorism existing in the Fourth Republic, perpetrated the event known as the Yumare Massacre," said lawyer Victor Lopez to Últimas Noticias.

For her part, Natali Castellanos, daughter of Nelson Martín Castellano Díaz, who was killed during the massacre, stressed that this is an act of justice 38 years after the massacre perpetrated during the Fourth Republic, under the government of Jaime Lusinchi, when her father and eight other victims were detained, tortured and subsequently executed.

Two of those responsible have already been sentenced in the case: retired Army General Alexis Sánchez Paz, sentenced to 13 years in prison, and Ramón Celestino Rojas to 16 years.

Henry López Sisco is the main suspect, and is in Costa Rica despite the fact that there is an arrest warrant against him, as well as against 40 other officials, including former police commissioner Oswaldo Ramos Oviedo and brothers Alirio and Norberto Rebanales, all from the Disip. This is the first massacre in Venezuela in which a conviction has been achieved in court.

During the Yumare Massacre, the following were extrajudicially executed: Rafael Ramon Quevedo Infante, Ronald Jose Morao Salgado, Nelson Martin Castellano Diaz, Dilia Antonia Rojas, Luis Rafael Guzman Green, Jose Rosendo Silva Medina, Pedro Pablo Jimenes Garcia, Simon Jose Romero Madriz and Alfredo Caicedo Castillo.

Although the police authorities at the time indicated that it was an armed confrontation between the Disip and a guerrilla group, witnesses and relatives of the victims stated that it was a group of social activists and promoters of the Bolivarian ideal, who were detained, tortured and, after being executed, had military clothing placed over their civilian clothes.