In almost any other country in the world, it would be a scandalous outrage and national obsession.  In Venezuela, where the speed of absurdist political theater zips along a such a fast pace – from war with Colombia to an attack on golf to presidential advice on the proper duration of a shower – such an event simply passes by relatively undistinguished from the daily grind of creeping dictatorship.

The outrageous event I am referring to is that of the imprisoned Control Court Judge María Lourdes Afiuni, who over the weekend suffered not the first, but the second attempt made on her life.  According to reports, on Sunday, Jan. 3, Judge Afiuni was attacked by a large group of inmates, armed with chuzos (shanks), and wearing the standard prison battle dress of headbands and legbands made of bright tape symbolizing “war” and “mutiny.”  Before she was rescued by guards and moved to the staff sick bay, her attackers poured gasoline into her holding area and shouted threats that they would “burn her alive.”

These were the events strongly denounced in a recent statement from the NGO Justicia y Proceso Venezuela (JUYPRO), signed by the lawyers Theresly Malavé Wadsker and José Luís Rodríguez, which places direct blame on the Chávez administration and the Public Ministry, both of whom have direct knowledge of the specific risks to Judge Afiuni’s life in this facility.