Jawad Walid al-Aridi, 22, a Lebanese national was shot and killed in Carúpano,
a coastal city in the eastern Venezuelan state of Sucre during an
attempted armed robbery on Saturday evening (April 28). As a result of the unprovoked shooting death, al-Aridi's family and friends put extreme pressure on the Lebanese Embassy in Caracas to pressure the Venezuelan government to bring the assailant to justice.
COMMENT: What may have been helpful in getting the Venezuelan government to take action is the fact that the victim was closely related to on the victim's family is that the Unconfirmed reports revealed that the victim is closely related to Ghazi al-Aridi, the Lebanese minister of Public Works in Beirut.
It needs to be mentioned that the population of Iraq and Venezuela are very close to being the same. Yet, whereas 4,644 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2009, the number of homicides in Venezuela during the same year exceeded 16,000.
The sad commentary is that not only have active duty police been linked to criminal offenses, but the country's national police is both ineffective and corrupt, which is why the central government is in the process of totally revamping the police structure. Unfortunately, this could take several years before any positive results can be realized.
