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Caracas agrees to expand presence of UN human rights officials in Venezuela

Earlier, the international fact-finding mission on human rights violations in Venezuela claimed national officials were involved in crimes

BUENOS AIRES, October 1. /TASS/. The Venezuelan government has agreed to expand presence of representatives of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in the country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday.

"We agreed to improve coordination and dialogue as well as expand presence of the UN [Human Rights] Office representatives in Venezuela to continue working," he said.

According to Maduro, speaking to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, he noted that the office’s envoys "work rather well" in the country and facilitated improved dialogue. The Human Rights Office and the Venezuelan government agreed permanent presence of its specialists last June when Bachelet paid a visit to the country.

Earlier, the international fact-finding mission on human rights violations in Venezuela claimed national officials were involved in crimes. In partiualr, the mission head revealed she has grounds to believe that the authorities and security forced had been planning and carrying out gross human rights violations since 2014.

The report of the mission created last September under the UN Human Rights Council decision contains 411 pages. It is based on 274 remote interviews which the mission conducted with the alleged victims since the Venezuelan authorities left requests to visit the country unanswered. Nevertheless, the experts counted 53 cases of extrajudicial executions as well as 2,552 additional incidents which saw the security services committed 5,094 killings.