‘US sending guns, ammo to Maduro’s enemies’
CARACAS —Venezuelan authorities say a US-owned air freight company delivered a crate of assault weapons earlier this week to the international airport in Valencia to be used in “terrorist actions” against the embattled government of Nicolas Maduro, according to a report in the Tribune News Service.
An air freight company, 21 Air, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, operates the Boeing 767 aircraft the Venezuelans claim was used in the arms transfer, Tribune reported. The flight originated in Miami on Sunday.
The Boeing 767 has made dozens of flights between Miami International Airport and destinations in Colombia and Venezuela since Jan. 11, a flight tracking service shows, often returning to Miami for only a few hours before flying again to South America.
The discovery of the weapons was on Tuesday — two days after the flight landed briefly in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city — as tax authorities and other inspectors conducted a routine inspection of cargo from the flight, according to a statement by the Carabobo state governor’s office.
Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz, Venezuela’s vice-minister of citizen security, said authorities found 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges, and 90 military-grade radio antennas, among other items, the Tribune reported.
“This material was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States,” Palencia Ortiz was quoted as saying.
The freight company, which started five years ago, operates two cargo planes, a Boeing 747 and a Boeing 767, according to the 21 Air website. The Boeing 767, a 32-year-old aircraft once flown by the now-defunct Brazilian carrier Varig, carries the registration N-881-YV and is the aircraft that landed in Valencia on Sunday.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent through its website, the Tribune said.
The mobile phone of the company’s chief executive, Michael Mendez, had a recording on Wednesday that said it could not accept calls.
An Ottawa, Canada-based analyst of unusual ship and plane movements, Steffan Watkins, drew attention to the frequent flights of the 21 Air cargo plane in a series of tweets yesterday, the Tribune reported.
“All year, they were flying between Philadelphia and Miami and all over the place, but all continental US,” Watkins said in a telephone interview. “Then all of a sudden in January, things changed.”
That is when the cargo plane began flying daily to destinations in Colombia and Venezuela and sometimes several times a day, Watkins said. The plane has made nearly 40 roundtrip flights from Miami International Airport to Caracas and Valencia in Venezuela, and Bogota and Medellin in Colombia since Jan.11.
The most recent tracking of the aircraft showed it arrived at Miami airport from Medellin after midnight on Thursday.
The aircraft in question has passed through many hands since Varig took delivery of it in 1987. In 2004, it was passed to GE Capital Aviation Services, a leasing company that is part of the General Electric conglomerate, according to an operator history on the planespotters.net website, the Tribune reported.
Tampa Cargo, Avianca Cargo and Dynamic Airways later controlled the aircraft until 21 Air received it in 2014.
The provenance of the alleged weaponry was not apparent. And questions about who the arms shipment was destined for, if the Venezuelan version of events is true, only mounted. Delivery at a commercial airport would indicate somebody with authority there would have had a hand.
Venezuelan authorities displayed the weaponry they said was delivered by the 21 Air cargo plane on open-air tables draped in red cloth. Some of the rifles included stands for long-range targeting.