Posted on Fri, Oct. 08, 2004
VENEZUELA
Outspoken Chávez foe seeks asylum in Miami
Robert Alonso, who advocated disobedience against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, has surfaced in Miami seeking asylum.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@herald.com
A Venezuelan ranch owner and strident opponent of President Hugo Chávez says he had nothing to do with dozens of Colombians who supposedly received paramilitary training at his farm near Caracas.
Robert Alonso said the fighters likely were never on his property and that last spring's incident was a government plot to discredit him and Venezuela's opposition.
''It was payback for my tactics,'' Alonso said, referring to his systematic calls for aggressive civil disobedience against Chávez.
In his first wide-ranging interview with a U.S. newspaper since going into hiding months ago, Alonso told The Herald he plans to stay in the United States by seeking haven under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows Cuban refugees who reach U.S. soil to stay.
Sitting at a Starbucks on Kendall Drive near Dadeland Mall, the 54-year-old Alonso said he believes the so-called wet-foot/dry-foot policy applies to him because he still has his Cuban birth certificate.
(snip/...)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/9864387.htm(Free registration required)
Robert Alonso
Alonso's sister,actress Maria Conchita Alonso
who has been in Arnold Gropenfuhrer films.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For the last three months, the intelligence agencies conducted an investigation which, this morning between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., resulted in the capture of an important Colombian paramilitary leader. The operation continued, and “before the sun rose, our patriotic men and women had captured 53 paramilitaries (now 56), all Colombians, dressed in Venezuelan military uniforms, with military haircuts, white and tricolor armbands (Venezuelan colors),” detailed President Chavez.
“The captured foreign terrorist agents were found in a building belonging to Cuban Robert Alonso, known anti-Castro activist. We’re talking about the Cuban counterrevolution passing through North (as in Miami), South, and Central America.”
Alonso was nicknamed ‘The Corporal’ and was one of the brains behind ‘Plan Guarimba,’ a violent far-right opposition strategy that was executed in communities and arterial highways in East Caracas from February 27 (when the G-15 Summit convened in the capital city) until March 3.
(snip)
According to security agency estimates, 130 Colombian paramilitaries entered Venezuela clandestinely. The President said that he gave the order to capture them by any means necessary in the shortest possible time.
(snip)
http://www.williambowles.info/venezuela/2nd_coup2.htmlhttp://www.williambowles.info/venezuela/2nd_coup2.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~According to Venezuela's Defense Minister Jorge Garcia Carneiro, the group's final goal was to overthrow the government. Garcia said that there are Venezuelan retired military officers involved in the plot. The Venezuelan military officers allegedly involved are part of the group of rebels who regularly met at Francia Square in the affluent eastern Caracas neighborhood of Altamira, to give anti-government speeches and make calls to overthrow it.
Linked to larger group
One of the detainees confessed to a TV reporter that the owner of the farm offered them 500 thousand Colombian pesos to come and work there. When they arrived 46 days ago, they were greeted by men in camouflage uniforms, who told them they would receive training for attacks to National Guard bases. One of the paramilitaries gave details of the opposition's plans, but asked that his face not be seen fearing retaliations against his family in Colombia
"Eight days after we arrived, they told us that we could not escape, that we cannot give information to anybody, and that we could not see or talk to any civilians, otherwise they would kill our families," said the detainee in a thick Colombian accent. The man was wearing a sky mask in order to avoid being identified.
The group planned to concentrate near a Caracas military base -presumably the National Guard Urban Security Command- and assault it next Wednesday. The witness explained that the goal of the operation was to steal weapons from a arms depot at the base in order to arm a militia of three to four thousand paramilitaries who would come to Venezuela.
(snip/...)
http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/venezuela/1845.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...........Venezuelan defense minister Jorge Garcia Carneiro said they were being trained by retired Venezuelan military officers to carry out a coup against the radical left-wing government of President Hugo Chavez.
One of the detainees confessed to a TV reporter that the owner of the farm offered him 500,000 Colombian pesos to work there. When he and other Colombians arrived more than a month ago, they were greeted by men in camouflage uniforms, who told them they would receive training for an attack on a National Guard base.
He said that the goal of the operation was to steal weapons from an arms depot at the base in order to arm a militia of about 3000 paramilitaries who would come to Venezuela.
According to documents found at the farm, at least 100 of the captured men were Colombian military reservists.
The property on which they were captured belongs to Cuban right-wing emigre Roberto Alonso, who is one of the leaders of a Venezuelan opposition group know as Bloque Democratico.
Ismael Garcia, a pro-government member of the legislature said that the paramilitaries who managed to escape did so through a property belonging to Cuban-Venezuelan media magnate and Chavez opponent Gustavo Cisneros. According to Newsweek magazine, Cisneros was one on the main architects of the failed April 11, 2002, coup against Chavez.
(snip/...)
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/583/583p18b.htm 
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