Chris Williamson has been attempting to justify his continuing support for the murderous Maduro regime in Venezuela by quoting comments supposedly made by a UN rapporteur criticising US sanctions on Venezuela, including during his shameful speech in Parliament on Monday:

“The UN rapporteur, the first to visit Venezuela in 21 years, clearly said that the US sanctions were illegal and could amount to crimes against humanity”.

But who exactly is this mysterious UN rapporteur Williamson is so keen to promote?

Guido can reveal that Williamson’s source is in fact Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, a hugely controversial Cuban-born lawyer and prolific author of historically revisionist accounts of Nazi Germany, who has also made numerous anti-Semitic remarks. You couldn’t make it up…

De Zayas is also a big fan of Fidel Castro, saying after he died that he “would go down in history as a figure of the calibre of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.” Perhaps that helps to explain why de Zayas was installed in 2012 to the UN post of ‘Expert on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order’. The post was created by the Cuban regime…

De Zayas is a hero to holocaust deniers for his writings accusing Churchill and Roosevelt of “genocide” against Nazi Germany during World War Two – in 2001 he was awarded a prize by the Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Inglostadt, an openly historical-revisionist outfit which skirts the bounds of outright holocaust denial. De Zayas has also made a range of anti-Semitic comments himself including:

“Nuremberg was an exercise in hypocrisy. A continuation of hate and war… a corruption of legal norms and procedures, a pollution of philosophy, a truly Pharisee tribunal”

and:

“Moses had a difficult time when he had the Jewish people cross through the Red Sea, because half of them were busy collecting beautiful shells.”

So it’s no real surprise that the actively anti-Semitic government of Nicolas Maduro controversially chose de Zayas in 2017 to be the first UN rapporteur allowed to visit the country since 2002. This prompted an outcry of a coalition of 50 NGOs who wrote an open letter to de Zayas questioning the validity and independence of his visit, and urging him to reconsider or insist that the regime allow other international observers in as a precondition of his visit. Naturally none of that happened…

Predictably, de Zayas’ report on Venezuela was a complete whitewash – it completely glosses over any notion of human rights abuses by the Maduro regime and even effectively accused opposition politicians such as Leopoldo Lopez who have been imprisoned by the regime of trying to foment war. Meanwhile, Maduro’s regime is characterised as a “democratically elected government” with de Zayas insisting that “only they can effectively protect the human rights of persons under their jurisdiction and implement change.” The UN should be ashamed to have allowed their name to be attached to a report like that…

De Zayas is no longer a UN rapporteur but is still actively dispensing his pro-Maduro propaganda, dismissing the current situation as a “so-called humanitarian crisis” and accusing the opposition of an “attempted coup d’etat”. The fact that Chris Williamson is repeatedly quoting a man like this so approvingly speaks volumes…