US pair held after coup debacle

A botched attempt to topple the regime of Nicolas Maduro with an invasion using fishing dinghies has ended with two American mercenaries in jail and eight people dead, the Venezuelan government has claimed.

State television showed two dishevelled men, named as Airan Berry, 41, and Luke Denman, 34. Both are understood to have served in US special forces. They were among 13 people the government says were captured following two landings by small boats along Venezuela’s Caribbean coastline.

‘‘They were playing Rambo. They were playing hero,’’ said President Maduro, referring to the Hollywood action film series.

In a plot perhaps more reminiscent of the 1970s film The Wild Geese, the two men were contracted by a Florida-based security company, Silvercorp USA, according to the firm’s owner Jordan Goudreau, who is also a special forces veteran. ‘‘Those are my guys,’’ he confirmed.

Goudreau said he planned and organised the operation to ‘‘liberate Venezuela’’ and capture Maduro, and that it involved a force of about 60 soldiers.

‘‘The mission in Caracas failed,’’ he told Bloomberg News. He insisted that surviving members of his team, some of whom had crossed into the country via Colombia, were still operational and that the next stage would be attacks on ‘‘tactical targets’’.

But the Maduro government yesterday was celebrating victory in defeating a plot which appeared so hopelessly optimistic that some observers are wondering whether the regime itself had staged it, or at least had informers inside the operation.

President Donald Trump has emphatically denied that his administration was involved. He said yesterday the raid ‘‘has nothing to do with our government’’.

According to the Maduro regime, the first landing took place before dawn on Sunday, local time, on Macuto beach near the city of La Guaira, the closest port to the capital, Caracas.

Venezuelan state TV showed images of the purported landing craft, which appeared similar to a traditional open boat popular with local sardine fishermen. Photos were also released by state security of apparently confiscated radios and pistols. On Monday, a second incursion was reported, this time close to Chuao, a picturesque tourist town famed for its cocoa production. The Maduro government broadcast a video of men on a small open motorboat, with their hands above their heads, while a military helicopter hovered overhead.

Nicolas Maduro Venezuela president

Venezuela’s attorney-general, Tarek William Saab, said 114 people suspected of involvement in the attempted attack had been arrested and that a manhunt was underway for 92 others.

Since 2019, the US government and about 60 nations around the world, including the UK, have recognised opposition leader

Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, on the basis that Maduro rigged elections in 2018 and is ruling as a dictator.

In March, Washington labelled Maduro a ‘‘narco-terrorist’’ and offered a US$15 million reward (NZ$25 million) for information leading to his arrest and capture.

Goudreau, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said his plan involved ‘‘dozens’’ of Venezuelans, mainly military deserters that trained at camps in neighbouring Colombia.

His most controversial claim is that the operation was originally to be funded by Mr Guaido’s western-backed but powerless administration, for a fee of US$213 million.

The former US soldier, who was pictured organising a Trump rally in North Carolina in October 2018, told a Miami TV station he had decided to reveal the identity of his client as he was never paid.

‘‘They (captured American mercenaries) were playing Rambo. They were playing hero.’’