Columbia Law School Graduate Kidnapped In Venezuela

The kidnapping appears to be politically motivated, tied to Yon Goicoechea's non-violent advocacy for freedom.

Yon Goicoechea (by Jkarteaga via Wikimedia)

Yon Goicoechea (by Jkarteaga via Wikimedia)

On Monday, Yon Goicoechea, a Venezuelan lawyer and political leader, was kidnapped in Caracas. We learned of this news through friends of Goicoechea from his time at Columbia Law School, where he earned an LLM degree in 2013.

Here’s a report from Cato at Liberty:

Members of what was surely the Venezuelan regime’s secret police yesterday kidnapped opposition leader and 2008 Milton Friedman Prize winner Yon Goicoechea from his car after he left his home.

Diosdado Cabello, the second most powerful person in the regime, publicly announced that the government had arrested Yon on the bogus claim that he was carrying explosives. In the video broadcast on national television, Cabello referred to the $500,000 Friedman Prize award that Yon received as evidence that Yon was some sort of foreign-employed agent bent on terrorism. “That man was trained by the U.S. empire for years,” he said, “It looks like his money ran out and he wants to come here to seek blood. They gave him the order there in the United States.”

This is an old trick of the Chavista regime—distract attention from the severe political, economic and social crisis that it has inflicted on the country.

The Venezuelan government wants to characterize the seizure of Goicoechea as an “arrest.” But here’s why that explanation doesn’t work, according to the Caracas Chronicles:

In the run-up to September 1st, the government is substantially cranking up its repressive activity, rolling out “preventive repression” that at times amounts to the selective kidnapping of Voluntad Popular members.

[On Monday] we witnessed how, while driving in a highway in Caracas, after leaving his home, Yon Goicochea was stopped by two vehicles. Several heavily armed men poured out of them and kidnapped him. The men are believed to be agents of the SEBIN secret police, but calling what they did an “arrest” makes no sense: there wasn’t even a semblance of due process involved.

Indeed. Goicoechea was arrested on Monday; today is Wednesday, and we still have no information about his whereabouts or well-being. There has been no arraignment or other public proceeding to allow Goicoechea to respond to the charges against him. He has not been allowed to see his family, his lawyers, or anyone else from the outside world. It’s not even clear where he is being held; see his popular Twitter feed (286,000 followers), which his wife is using to provide updates on his status and call for his return.

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And what about those claims of Goicoechea having explosives?

Nobody who knows Yon would believe this for a split second, the allegations make no sense. Yon, a key leader in the 2007 student movement that handed chavismo its first electoral defeat, had just returned to Venezuela after a long period abroad with his wife and two children. Yon won the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2008. He was awarded for his role in the student movement, and particularly for his efforts in non-violent advocacy for freedom.

Those who knew Goicoechea from his time at CLS couldn’t agree more.

“At Columbia, Yon espoused the same principles of democracy and strong institutions that he has been espousing in Venezuela since his recent return there,” said Sean Berens, a Columbia Law classmate of Goicoechea and former CLS Student Senate President. “But what gets you participation points in a CLS classroom can apparently result in your abduction by state forces in Caracas.”


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David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.