5 to an intermediate stage. That decision was appealed by the defense before the Court of Appeals on October 28, 2005. The appeal was denied on December 1, 2005. They add that on November 8, 2005, the defense filed a motion for nullity of the entire proceeding based on violations of judicial guarantees, that this motion has yet to be ruled on, and that the proceeding is in an intermediate phase. 24. The petitioners indicate that Brewer Carías participated in person at proceedings until September 28, 2005, when he left Venezuela. They note that on October 26, 2005, the defense of Allan Brewer Carías asked the Temporary Twenty-Fifth Judge to guarantee his right to be tried at liberty and issue an advance declaration that depriving him of liberty during trial would be out of order, 8 since he is not dangerous, is professionally and academically active, and has his residence and roots in Venezuela. They indicate that the judge never ruled on this motion. 25. They hold that, on May 10, 2006, the defense informed the Temporary Twenty-Fifth Judge that Allan Brewer Carías had accepted an appointment was adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Law in the United States, and they asked that the proceeding continue. They indicate that even though it was known that he was outside the country, on June 2, 2006, the Sixth Provisional Prosecutor asked the Judge to issue an arrest order for Allan Brewer Carías as he posed a flight risk. In response, on June 15, 2006, the Provisional Judge of Control ordered that he be taken into custody. However, that order has not been executed because, to date, Allan Brewer Carías remains abroad. 26. The petitioners indicate that on July 12, 2006, the Sixth Provisional Prosecutor sent a request for cooperation to INTERPOL to search for and locate Allan Brewer Carías, with a view to his preventive detention and possible extradition. In addition, on July 11, 2006, Venezuelan Ambassador to the Dominican Republic sent a communication to INTERPOL, requesting the arrest of Allan Brewer Carías, as he had been extended an invitation to give a lecture in that country. In addition, the diplomat had denounced him to the media in the Dominican Republic as a “conspirator”. They say that in response, INTERPOL requested information from the courts on the nature of the offense that had led Brewer Carías to be charged with a common crime. They indicate that in a clarification dated September 17, 2007, the Court of First Instance Sitting as Court of Control of the Judicial Circuit of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas answered that Allan Brewer Carías was the intellectual author of a failed attack on the President of the Republic, which, therefore, ruled out any possibility that the charges be considered as corresponding to a political crime. They indicate that the defense appealed and asked that said clarification be annulled; however, the appeal was dismissed on October 29, 2007. 27. In addition, they note that when an invitation was sent to Allan Brewer Carías to give a lecture at the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH), the Ambassador of Venezuela to Costa Rica sent a letter to the president of the IIDH referring to Allan Brewer Carías as someone who “as is known, participated as material and intellectual author and provided direction to ensure correctness in the drafting of the decree by which the constituted branches of government were abolished in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” and that for this reason “he fled the country.” They indicate that in addition arrest orders were requested of INTERPOL in connection with the two invitations sent to Allan Brewer Carías to give lectures in Peru and Spain, and that he decided not to attend, based on security considerations. 28. On January 11, 2008, the representatives of Allan Brewer Carías filed a motion for dismissal before the Twenty-Fifth Judge of Control under Decree 5790, with Rank, Value, and Force of a Special Amnesty Law, issued on December 31, 2007, by President Hugo Chávez. That provision, which covers “all those persons in conflict with the law, who as of this date have surrendered themselves to the 8 They note that Article 44(1) of the Constitution of Venezuela establishes that every person “shall be tried at liberty,” that Article 102 of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure (COPP) establishes that: ”one shall avoid, especially, requesting preventive deprivation of liberty of the accused when it is not absolutely necessary to ensure the purposes of the proceedings” and that its Article 125(12) establishes that it is a right of the accused “not to be judged in absentia, except as provided in the Constitution of the Republic.” The petitioners say that “the possibility of trial in absentia in the case of crimes against public property was eliminated from the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 1999, and therefore the phrase ‘except as provided in the Constitution of the Republic’ is no longer relevant.”