Crossword clues linked to Chavez ‘murder plot’
Newspaper under fire as puzzle claimed to reveal assassination plot against president’s brother.
The political paranoia that has gripped Venezuela as President Hugo Chavez battles cancer has been inflamed by a crossword puzzle.
The compiler of clues for a local newspaper suddenly found himself under investigation for a supposed assassination plot against the president’s brother, Adan.
The appearance of Adan’s name in a recent puzzle, along with the Spanish words for ‘‘assassinate’’ and ‘‘gunfire’’, provoked a flurry of alarm in government circles and a visit by intelligence agents to the office of Neptali Segovia, who has been publishing puzzles in the Ultimas Noticias newspaper for more than 17 years.
The fuss arose when a commentator on a state-run television channel noted that before he became president of France, Charles de Gaulle had used crossword puzzles to send coded messages to the French Resistance during World War II.
Miguel Angel Perez Pirela hinted that Chavez’s opponents were using puzzles to plot against the ailing president and his family.
Segovia denied any sinister intent and blamed the fuss on ‘‘irresponsible’’ speculation.
He pointed out that the word for bursts of gunfire – rafagas – also means gusts of wind.
Speculation about Chavez’s future has been rife in Venezuela since the president unexpectedly returned to Cuba for another round of radiation treatment in the middle of his campaign for the presidential election in October.
Neither Chavez nor his government has fully explained the nature of the abdominal cancer from which he is suffering and the president’s repeated assurances that he is recovering and is ready to serve another term have been undermined by periodic absences. Chavez appeared steady on his feet when he returned to Caracas from Havana on Friday and announced that the radiation cycle had been ‘‘successfully completed’’.
His longer-term prospects remain a puzzle for which he offered no further clues.