Chickens coming home to roost.
Via Daily Mail:
Jose Moncon was on the way home from his school for the mentally disabled, clutching nothing more threatening than his colouring book, when a demonstration blocked the road ahead and forced him to take a detour.
Moments later, a police snatch squad coming the other way scooped him up and put him in prison for unspecified crimes against the state.
He is severely epileptic and has the mental age of a ten-year-old. But because Jose is 21 and classed as an adult, he shares an airless cell with 18 other adult men, many of them hardened criminals. As Venezuela is jostling for top spot in the world homicide league, there are plenty of those around here.
Jose’s mother Maria, 44, is distraught as I meet her outside the terrifying Soviet-style ‘Palace of Justice’ in Maracay, a garrison town 60 miles from the capital, Caracas. It is more than a week since her terrified son was taken and his lawyer says the police have no idea how to treat his epileptic fits.[…]
Yet things are changing here — and fast. In recent days, the U.S. and much of the free world have recognised the country’s new young opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela’s legitimate interim head of state.
The U.S. — the main importer of Venezuelan oil — has now imposed a ban on all payments to the state-owned oil company, thus depriving the Maduro regime of 80 per cent of its income.
On top of that, the Bank of England is refusing to return £1 billion of gold bars currently in its vaults, saying Maduro is not their rightful owner. The dictator must now turn to the drug cartels for cash.