Venezuelan judge María Lourdes Afiuni has been fully exonerated after courts definitively closed all charges against her, ending a legal ordeal that began in 2009 when then-President Hugo Chávez publicly demanded she be sentenced to 30 years in prison after she ordered the conditional release of a detained banker. Known as "Chávez's personal prisoner," Afiuni spent years in pretrial detention — during which her family and lawyers alleged she suffered torture and sexual abuse — followed by house arrest and probation, with a further five-year sentence handed down in 2019 on charges her supporters called fabricated. Her family's announcement, made days after she was hospitalised with newly discovered tumours, described the case as a stark symbol of judicial independence being weaponised for political retaliation in Venezuela.