Venezuela says it foiled attack by boat on main port city
Updated 11:27 am CDT, Sunday, May 3, 2020
Photo: Matias Delacroix, AP
Security forces patrol in the port city of La Guaira, Venezuela, Sunday, May 3, 2020. Interior Nestor Reverol said on state television that security forces overcame before dawn Sunday an armed maritime incursion with speedboats from neighboring Colombia in which several attackers were killed and others detained.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan officials said they foiled an early morning attempt by a group of armed men to invade the country by boat on Sunday, killing eight attackers and arresting two more.
Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said that two of the attackers were being interrogated by authorities. Cabello said it was carried out by neighboring Colombia with United States backing in a plot to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. Both countries have repeatedly denied earlier Venezuelan allegations of backing for military plots against the socialist government.
“Those who assume they can attack the institutional framework in Venezuela will have to assume the consequences of their action," said Cabello, adding that one of the detained claimed to be an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Authorities said they found Peruvian documents, high-caliber weapons, satellite phones, uniforms and helmets adorned with the U.S. flag.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Venezuela-says-it-foiled-attack-by-boat-from-15243261.php
Also posted in LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142485582
= new reply since forum marked as read
were found living in quarters constructed on the ranch of a man, Roberto Alonso, a Cuban "exile" (who ran after this discovery to Miami where he lives now), in a plot to overthrow Hugo Chavez after taking a National Guard armory and stealing the weapons first. The government was tipped off after they were seen training on the ranch, and living there:
Colombian paramilitaries arrested in Venezuela
Jeremy Lennard and agencies
Mon 10 May 2004 07.20 EDT
Venezuelan police have arrested more than 70 Colombian paramilitary fighters who were allegedly plotting to strike against the government in Caracas, according to the country's president, Hugo Chávez.
Opposition leaders, however, were quick to dismiss the president's claim, calling the raids on a farm less than 10 miles from the capital a ruse to divert attention from their efforts to oust Mr Chávez in a recall vote.
During his weekly radio and TV broadcast, Hello Mr President, Mr Chávez said that 53 paramilitary fighters were arrested at the farm early on Sunday and another 24 were picked up after fleeing into the countryside.
The country's security forces were uncovering additional clues and searching for more suspects, he said, adding that the arrests were proof of a conspiracy against his government involving Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida and neighbouring Colombia.
Mr Chávez also claimed the plot was backed by Venezuela's mostly pro-opposition news media and said that the raids had "eliminated the seed of a terrorist group".
"Now they are importing terrorists," Mr Chávez said of his opponents, adding that the farm - in the municipality of El Hatillo - was owned by Roberto Alonso, a Cuban exile with links to Venezuelan and Cuban exiles.
"There are people in the United States who keep thinking how to start a war in Venezuela so that they can justify an invasion," he said.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/10/venezuela.jeremylennard
~ ~ ~
Colombian paramilitaries being rounded up at the ranch outside Caracas, owned by current Miami resident, Roberto Alonso, (brother of Hollywood "actress" María Conchita Alonso ) :
~ ~ ~
Colombian militia camp found inside Venezuela
April 30, 2008
By IANS,
Caracas : Venezuela’s armed forces have discovered a camp set up by a Colombian militia group inside the country and arrested four of its members, Spain’s EFE news agency reported Wednesday quoting a top military official.
The secret camp of the outlawed United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, was found last Thursday in the western state of Zulia near the Colombian borders, General Jesus Gonzalez said, adding that the camp was set up to train the right-wing paramilitaries.
He also said that several documents, 19 uniforms with AUC insignia, weapons, munitions, explosives and 80 kgs of cocaine were found from the site.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had earlier warned about the infiltration of Colombian paramilitaries in his country, as part of a plan to destabilise his leftist government.
The AUC, blamed by the UN for 80 percent of the war crimes in Colombia’s internal conflict, demobilized more than 31,000 of its fighters between 2003 and 2006 amid negotiations with the administration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
Made up of rural defence cooperatives formed more than 20 years ago to battle leftist rebels, most of the AUC militias degenerated into death squads, carrying out massacres of peasants, journalists and trade unionists suspected of having sympathy for the leftists.
http://twocircles.net/2008apr30/colombian_militia_camp_found_inside_venezuela.html#.VzONyOT2bmQ
(Short article, no more at link.)
~ ~ ~
A few years later:
Venezuelan Government Foils Destabilisation Plans
By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim
Military and government officials have stated that Colombian paramilitaries procured Venezuelan military uniforms, C4 explosives and 50 high capacity magazines for use in an attack on Venezuelan soil (YVKE).
Merida, April 12th 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan security forces have foiled a plot to violently destabilise the country, Vice-president Jorge Arreaza announced this afternoon.
“The Bolivarian National Armed Forces and state security agencies have dismantled a plan that would affect the election or post-election,” Arreaza told Venezuelan media.
He further stated that the plot involved Salvadorian mercenaries who “wanted, but could not, intervene to disrupt the peace of the republic at the last minute”.
The government first announced the presence of two groups of Salvadorian mercenaries operating in Venezuela on April 6.
Internal Affairs and Justice Minister Nestor Reverol warned that the groups were funded by drug trafficking, and have links to far right terrorists including Luis Posada Carriles. Currently living in Miami, Carriles has been convicted in Panama of a number of terrorist attacks, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airline that claimed 73 lives.
More:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/110812938
So much essential information has been delivered in the link posted in the second tweet! I have heard of Empresas Polar, at least 20 years ago. Good grief! Had no idea how powerful that vast corporation really IS! The names discussed are so significant, so important to people wanting to know, but being misinformed by corporate media!
One named popped up I scanned in a search, and discovered he has written something shared with CNN message board readers 19 or 20 years ago in a now inactive message board system by a poster who had also been a UPI journalist in South America for many years, before it was sucked up by ultra-right-wing Bush family friend, Rev. Sung Myung Moon. Here is the very same description shared by a different authority explaining how it is we get so much twisted news about the Americas:
Book Description
Since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has become an important news item. Western coverage is shaped by the cultural milieu of its journalists, with news written from New York or London by non-specialists or by those staying inside wealthy guarded enclaves in an intensely segregated Caracas. Journalists mainly work with English-speaking elites and have little contact with the poor majority. Therefore, they reproduce ideas largely attuned to a Western, neoliberal understanding of Venezuela.
https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233?fbclid=IwAR2jqjg084vd-An2ZIPV-aFclEUYAZIXPlgsAU_o4jgXHfr0OhQpoJ0RMZg
Thanks so much for providing such important food for thought!
Not to be outdone by UPI...
Link to tweet
It's actually an accomplishment that Venezuela can function at all.
Given the constant propaganda...
Economic sanctions..
Covert Ops.
Link to tweet
Where is Jack Ryan when you need him?
