Yesterday around noon, when we heard reports that the political prisoner Eligio Cedeño, a client whom I represent, had finally been released on parole from his unlawful detention after almost three full years of imprisonment without conviction of any crime, our spirits were strong. This would be the first Christmas that Eligio would be able to spend with his family since 2007.

Then within hours, the political prosecutors began taking their revenge, placing under arrest Judge María Lourdes Afiuni, a person who did nothing more than perform her job, administer justice as a member of a supposedly independent judiciary, and declare Cedeño’s continued incarceration as illegal. It was this fair judicial decision, based upon various opinions from independent international bodies which had also found Cedeño’s detention to be arbitrary, which released him – not an “escape” as reported by some media, not a “conspiracy” as alleged by the political prosecutors, but a normal, regular legal decision which any true rule of law court would have made years ago.

Nevertheless, Venezuela’s Keystone Kops, surprised as I was that there was actually just one fair decision in the Cedeño case, are shaking down every structure in Caracas in a massive manhunt, as though mild-mannered banker were holding nuclear secrets. If one cannot see the revanchist, personal nature motivating these events, I don’t know how to convince you of it.