EL UNIVERSAL

Demonstrators Wednesday voiced rejection and repudiation against the murder of brothers Jason Faddoul Diab (12), Kevin Faddoul Diab (13) and Bryan Faddoul Diab (17), and their driver Miguel Rivas (30) after they were kidnapped for 41 days.

Dozen people demonstrated outside the Ministry of the Interior and Justice in Urdaneta Avenue, downtown Caracas, and demanded authorities to face crime nationwide.

Protesters blocked roads and main highways in several areas of the Venezuelan capital, while motorists wrote "Mourning" and "Justice Now!" on their car windshields.

Students and teachers of main universities took the streets to express their consternation. 

Opposition leaders took part in the demonstrations. Baruta Mayor Enrique Capriles Radonski claimed the murder shows that "life is worthless" in Venezuela.
He lashed out at Hugo Chávez' Government, saying that the Venezuelan administration constantly talks about imperialism and asymmetric war, rather than waging war against crime.

Capriles Radonski stressed that 100,000 people have been killed in the last seven years in Venezuela. Capriles added that the citizens' security plan implemented by the Ministry of the Interior and Justice has failed.

A press photographer is shot to death
Jorge Aguirre, a photographer with El Mundo newspaper who was covering  a protest against the murder of Faddoul brothers near Venezuela Square, east Caracas, was shot to death.

According to Julio Calderón, the victim's driver, their vehicle was intercepted by an unidentified man in a motorcycle who ordered them to stop.

"He said he was a police officer, but since he had no identification, I did not stop." said Calderón. He added that some minutes later, the man appeared again and made some shots, wounding Aguirre.

The victim was taken to the Hospital Clínico Universitario, where he was promptly attended, but physicians could not safe his life.

The government regrets the murders
"We lament, despite the efforts that were made 24 hours a day since this started, we have not been able to prevent this abominable homicide," said the minister of the Interior and Justice Jesse Chacón said, after calling Faddoul brothers' father to advise him of the finding.

Authorities found the bodies of the three Faddoul Diab brothers near an electrical tower, in San Antonio de Yare, west of Caracas.

Chacón added the perpetrators would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The three brothers and their driver were abducted last February 23rd when unidentified men dressed as police officers stopped their car at a roadside checkpoint in Caracas as the boys were on their way to school.

The victims were found with gunshot wounds in their head and neck area. It appeared they had been killed at least two days before their bodies were found, judicial police chief Marco Chávez said on state television.

These new murders happen just days after the killing of a prominent Italian businessman,  Filippo Sindoni, who was also kipnapped. His car was stopped at a checkpoint where four men wearing police uniforms and carrying firearms attacked him and his driver/bodyguard.