Venezuela says ‘terrorists’ detained in attack on leader
CARACAS, Venezuela — The Venezuelan government made more arrests Sunday in connection with an apparent assassination attempt on President Nicolas Maduro, as the South American nation braced for a possibility of a wider crackdown on dissent.
Interior Minister Nestor Luis Reverol said six “terrorists” had been detained Sunday, a day after the government said drones carrying explosives had targeted Maduro during a nationally televised address. Reverol said all the “material and intellectual authors inside and outside of the country” have been identified, but he did not provide further details.
Maduro was unharmed in the incident, which officials said injured seven soldiers. Video showed hundreds of Maduro’s troops seemingly fleeing in panic at the sound of an explosion.
In a speech delivered three hours after the incident, the president accused Venezuelan dissidents living in the United States and “far right” extremists linked to Colombia for the alleged attack, saying a “shield of love” had protected his life.
“This was an attempt to kill me,” Maduro said.
The assailants flew two drones, each packed with 2.2 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, toward Maduro, his wife and other top leaders as the president spoke Saturday evening at an event celebrating the 81st anniversary of the National Guard, Reverol said. One of the drones was to explode above the president while the other was to detonate directly in front of him, Reverol added.
But the military managed to knock one of the drones off
course electronically and the other crashed into an apartment building two blocks away from where Maduro was speaking to the hundreds of troops, Reverol said.
“We have six terrorists and assassins detained,” Reverol said. “In the next hours, there could be more arrests.”
Of those arrested, Reverol said, two had previous runins with the government, although he did not provide their names nor say what charges they faced. One was said to have taken part in 2014 protests that rocked the nation as it descended into an economic crisis. The other was said to have had a warrant out for his arrest in an attack on a military barracks.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, appearing on state television Sunday, said the attackers were aiming to take out Venezuela’s entire leadership, including Maduro.
Although some opposition leaders said they doubted the government’s version of events, two residents of a nearby building said Sunday that they saw the drone and watched it explode.
“We saw the drone that looked like the size of half a bicycle. It came from the sky, and we thought it was a boy playing with it,” said Pedro Pena, 62, who was in a seventh-floor apartment with Gladys Miquelena, 56.
Seconds after they saw it, it exploded, he said.
“We were scared. It sounded like a bomb,” he said.
There had been reports of a gas leak and explosion, but witnesses dismissed those.
“It was not a gas leak. We have direct gas,” said Catherine Pita, 24, a neighbor. “It was a drone that hit the building and caused the fire. One girl was hit by flying glass on the head and was taken to the hospital.”
Maduro went so far as to blame Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos by name, prompting Santos’ office to issue an “emphatic denial.”
“The suggestion that the Colombian president is responsible for this supposed attack against the Venezuela president is absurd and lacking in all foundation,” Santos’ office said in a statement. “It is already the custom of the Venezuelan leader to permanently blame Colombia for any type of situation.”
A senior U.S. State Department official declined to comment on the incident beyond saying the department was following reports from Caracas.
A video of the incident at 5:40 p.m. Saturday showed first lady Cilia Flores looking up from beside Maduro and putting her hand to her heart, appearing frightened, after an apparent explosion. Maduro is then abruptly cut off during his address to the National Guard. A camera then trains on lines of military personnel in formation in the center of Caracas. Seconds later, the soldiers, as well as figures standing behind barricades, run to one side, and Maduro’s voice could be heard saying, “Let’s go to the right.”
“From the footage of the stage and the military scattering, it looks like they saw something,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert with the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank. “But if the government or someone else does not put out some footage of these drones or the explosions, it should be considered highly suspect. They film everything they do from multiple angles. So it is hard to imagine that they would not have footage of this if it actually happened.”
Venezuelan opposition leaders cast doubts on the government’s version of the attack. They accused it of looking for an excuse to round up the increasing number of army deserters while distracting the public from an economic crisis in which hunger and malnutrition are growing and disease is spreading as hospitals lack even basic medicines.
Seven journalists covering the story were stopped by security forces and interrogated for hours, according to Venezuela’s National Union of Press Workers. All were freed, but some had their cameras confiscated, the union said.
“We were doing videos from our car because it was raining, and then we tried to go near Bolivar Avenue to show the situation when national guard and military intelligence approached us,” Neidy Freites, a reporter for the live-streaming news site VivoPlay, said in a video posted on the outlet’s Twitter account.
“One of them got in our car. … He almost sat on top of me,” she said. “He took my phone, told me to turn off the camera. It was intimidating.”
A coalition of parties and civil-society groups called the Ample Front said in a statement: “It remains to be seen if it really was an attack, a chance accident or some of the other versions circulating in the media.
“We are alerting against the government attempting to deviate the focus of inter- national and national public opinion from the crisis, and to criminalize those who democratically oppose it,” the group said.
Juan Pablo Guanipa, who was removed as governor of the state of Zulia, tweeted the video of the moment the speech was interrupted and said: “These images leave us two conclusions. That the regime of Maduro knows it has so much rejection from the people and the military that it puts up an attack to see how much Venezuelan and international solidarity he can gather. And that the armed forces are scared and not willing to defend his life.
Maduro on Sunday sought to rally his supporters via Twitter, saying: “People of Venezuela! I have complete trust that I will dedicate all the years of my life to the permanent fight for our Homeland. Our fight is just!”
The incident left Venezuela reeling at a time of national distress. The South American nation is in the thick of a roiling political and economic crisis.
With inflation spiraling toward 1 million percent and shortages growing more acute, dozens of officers and soldiers have been arrested by the government in connection with alleged coup plots.
In June 2017, an intelligence police commander flew a helicopter over government institutions and threw grenades at the country’s Supreme Court building. The commander, Oscar Perez, was executed in January after publishing videos of his confrontation with military personnel.
Hundreds of soldiers have deserted their posts since Maduro — a former bus driver and the successor to Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 — won an election in May that opposition leaders and dozens of countries, including the United States, called fraudulent.
“He’ll use the incident to radicalize; likely, to purge the military, strengthen his personal guard, and embellish the narrative about being under attack from the U.S. and Colombia and others in a bid for sympathy and support,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, a business and culture organization.
Venezuelan opposition leaders cast doubts on the government’s version of the attack.