Prosecutor Tarek William Saab, an ally of Nicolás Maduro, has ordered the capture of journalist Sebastiana Barráez, specialized in military affairs, and lawyer and human rights defender Tamara Suju, who is in exile.
A week ago, the president denounced alleged attacks to assassinate him and his collaborators that the security forces supposedly managed to dismantle during 2023. Now, the Prosecutor's Office implicates Barráez and Suju in these plans.
In a statement broadcast on the State channel, Saab also announced arrest warrants against the YouTubers Wender Villalobos and Norbey Marín and the retired soldiers Mario Iván Carratú Molina and José Antonio Colina.
For the umpteenth time, Chavismo once again denounces 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 have not revealed their identities.
“They had the objective of assassinating me, assassinating important political and military leaders of Venezuela and creating chaos and commotion in the country,” said the Venezuelan president, who pointed to the United States intelligence service, Colombian drug trafficking and the extreme right. as he refers to the Venezuelan opposition, as the authors of the plan.
A few weeks ago, however, he agreed to exchange former Green Berets Luke Denaman and Airan Berry, sentenced in 2020 to 20 years in prison for a failed raid on the Venezuelan coast, for Colombian businessman Alex Saab, who the United States had presented to trial for money laundering and as a financial operator of senior officials of Chavismo and that Venezuela claimed as a diplomat.
Once free, he has put him in charge of the International Center for Productive Investments of Venezuela, an entity that controls the national and international commercial relations of the State.
Prosecutor Saab has delved this Monday into five assassination plans that have been called High Conspiracy, the Guasdualito Espionage Case, the La Gaviota Case, the Fortunato Case and the White Bracelet without providing further details on the number of detainees.
“Since May 2023 until now, five violent actions have been attempted against Venezuela.
The soldiers involved were summoned directly from Colombia, in collaboration with the CIA, the DEA and the Colombian army of the time,” the official reiterated.
During the press conference, Saab presented a video in which detained soldiers accused Suju, Barráez and the others accused of intervening in the plan to attack the president and the Chavista governor of the border state of Táchira, Freddy Bernal, in an alleged operation which would take place on New Year's Eve, under the coordination of former military man Ángelo Heredia, who had already been imprisoned in 2019 for crimes of treason and had escaped.
Sebastiana Barráez has been covering the opaque military source for decades.
Tamara Suju, asylum in the Czech Republic since 2014, has denounced cases of torture and other human rights violations against military political prisoners, who number more than a hundred, and has supported the file against Maduro in the International Criminal Court.
Both denounced the mistreatment received during the recapture of Heredia on December 14, while he was trying 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 it is what they need to control so that people in the country feel totally defenseless,” Suju responded on her social networks to the accusations of the fiscal.
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 conversations it has been agreed to improve democratic guarantees for the Venezuelan opposition, on the ground, Chavismo maintains its apparatus of control and continues to imprison dissidents.
In recent weeks, some political prisoners have been released, but new prisoners have also entered the dungeons where more than 200 people remain locked up for political reasons.
Added to this is the implementation, in view of the upcoming presidential elections, of the so-called “Bolivarian fury”, a civic-military police organization “to confront any terrorist and coup attempt, no matter how it presents itself”, as explained by the Maduro himself, something that human rights defenders see as part of a strategy to intimidate dissidents.
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