By Belen Avelar
NEW YORK, NY – In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, the attorney-in-chief & executive officer of the Legal AID Society of New York asked for help this week to secure the release of Eyvin Hernandez, a former career public defender detained in Venezuela for more than nine months in a “notoriously brutal prison.”
Throughout Hernandez’s career as a public defender. he has served more than 15 years in the Los Angeles community, helping citizens who don’t have a voice, advocating for justice, wrote Twyla Carter, adding, “He is one of our advocates, and it is now incumbent upon us to advocate for him.”
Carter said the National Association for Public Defense colleagues wrote a letter to Biden indicating their concerns, stating, “it is unthinkable to us that any person would be wrongfully incarcerated or suffer inhumane conditions. It is unconscionable when it is an advocate who has been in service of those most vulnerable.”
Since March 31, Hernandez has been detained in Venezuela’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence prison, said Carter, on “false” political conspiracy charges and is being denied his right to due process of law to free himself, quoting the U.S. State Department.
Carter emphasized her concern about Hernandez’s release in her letter, and asked the Biden Administration take action, as it has in other similar situations, to “restore access to justice as a federal imperative and help free those individuals who have been wrongfully detained.”
