Prosecutor Tarek William Saab, an ally of Nicolás Maduro, has ordered the arrest of journalist Sebastiana Barráez, who specializes in military affairs, and exiled lawyer and human rights defender Tamara Suju. A week ago, the president denounced suspected assassination attempts against him and his collaborators, which the security forces allegedly repelled in the course of 2023. Now the public prosecutor's office is implicating Barráez and Suju in these plans. In a statement broadcast on the state broadcaster, Saab also announced arrest warrants against YouTubers Wender Villalobos and Norbey Marín, as well as retired soldiers Mario Iván Carratú Molina and José Antonio Colina.
For the umpteenth time, Chavismo is once again denouncing a conspiracy against it. In this case, according to Maduro's version, they captured “mercenaries and soldiers” from Peru, Colombia, the United States and Venezuela, although they did not reveal their identities. “They had the goal of assassinating me, assassinating important political and military leaders of Venezuela and creating chaos and turmoil in the country,” said the Venezuelan president, who pointed to the US intelligence service, the Colombian drug trade and the far right as perpetrators of the plan he refers to the Venezuelan opposition.
However, a few weeks ago he agreed to swap former Green Berets Luke Denaman and Airan Berry, who were sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2020 for a failed raid on the Venezuelan coast, for Colombian businessman Alex Saab, whom the US had presented for trial Money laundering and as a financial operator high-ranking Chavismo officials, whom Venezuela described as diplomats. After his release, he was put in charge of the International Center for Productive Investments of Venezuela, an institution that controls the state's domestic and international commercial relations.
Prosecutor Saab dealt this Monday with five assassination plots called the “High Conspiracy”: the Guasdualito espionage case, the La Gaviota case, the Fortunato case and the White Bracelet, without giving further details on the number of detainees . “From May 2023 to today, there have been five attempted acts of violence against Venezuela. “The soldiers involved were drafted directly from Colombia in collaboration with the CIA, the DEA and the then Colombian Army,” the official affirmed.
During the press conference, Saab presented a video in which detained soldiers accused Suju, Barráez and the other defendants of intervening in the plan to attack the president and Chavista governor of the border state of Táchira, Freddy Bernal, in an operation allegedly taking place on New Year's Eve , under the coordination of former military officer Ángelo Heredia, who had already been imprisoned for treason in 2019 and had fled.
Sebastiana Barráez has been covering the opaque military source for decades. Tamara Suju, an asylum seeker in the Czech Republic since 2014, has reported cases of torture and other human rights violations against more than a hundred political military prisoners and filed a lawsuit against Maduro at the International Criminal Court. Both denounced the abuses he suffered during the recapture of Heredia on December 14, when he tried to cross a trail into Colombia from San Antonio del Táchira. “The prosecutor of the dictatorship continues to criminalize the work of lawyers and human rights defenders because they need to control it so that the people of the country feel completely unprotected,” Suju responded to the finance minister’s allegations on her social networks.
Although the Government of Venezuela has resumed dialogue in the negotiations promoted by the international community to find a peaceful solution to the political conflict, and in these talks it has been agreed to improve democratic guarantees for the Venezuelan opposition, Chavismo on the ground retains its apparatus in control and continues to imprison dissidents.
In recent weeks, some political prisoners have been released, but new prisoners have also been added to the dungeons, where more than 200 people are imprisoned for political reasons. In addition, in view of the upcoming presidential elections, there is the introduction of the so-called “Bolivarian Fury”, a civil-military police organization “to counter any terrorist and coup attempt, no matter how it presents itself”, as explained by Maduro himself, which human rights defenders are part of a strategy to intimidate dissidents.
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