 |
LATIN AMERICA |
| |
Venezuela Announces Arrest of Alleged
Colombian Spies
CARACAS – Venezuelan authorities arrested
agents of Colombia’s DAS security service
who were caught “doing espionage work,”
Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Arias
Cardenas said on Tuesday.
“They will be presented in the next few
hours by the Interior Relations Ministry and
security forces” and will face trial in
“Venezuelan courts,” he said without
revealing how many were captured or any
other details.
“In a situation as serious as the capture of
security agents of Colombia’s DAS engaged in
spying” were found “plans for destabilizing
our government, our people and our
democracy,” Arias said.
The announcement came a day after President
Hugo Chavez’s government expressed to
Colombia its “most energetic protest” about
alleged spying by Colombian officials and
demanded an immediate end to such “clearly
unfriendly” acts.
“In the investigations carried out,
documents have been seized that refer to a
wide-ranging plot of conspiracy and
destabilization against Venezuela,” said the
note delivered Monday to the Colombian
ambassador in Caracas, Maria Luisa Chappe.
It was Caracas’ second formal protest to the
government of neighboring Colombia in the
last few days.
Last Saturday, the Chavez government
protested against a statement by Colombian
Defense Minister Gabriel Silva to the effect
that drug-smuggling flights to Central
America and the United States take off from
Venezuela, which is not a drug-producing
country but serves as a conduit for cocaine
from Colombia.
Relations between Venezuela and Colombia
were already strained over a prospective
military accord between Bogota and
Washington, which includes the use of seven
Colombian bases by U.S. armed forces.
Chavez, survivor of a 2002 coup attempt that
former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says took
place with Washington’s advance knowledge if
not active collusion, considers the incident
as a threat to his “Bolivarian Revolution.”
Against that backdrop, the Venezuelan
government confirmed Sunday that the 10
bodies found the day before were from the
group of 12 people – 10 Colombians, one
Peruvian and one Venezuelan – kidnapped Oct.
11 during an amateur soccer match in the
Venezuelan border town of Fernandez Feo.
One of those kidnapped, a Colombian now
confined to a Venezuelan clinic under strict
security measures, survived the multiple
homicide, while the whereabouts of the other
person remains unknown.
Leftist guerrillas, right-wing
paramilitaries and well-armed drug
traffickers all operate in the border
region, a lawless area where kidnappings and
other crimes are common.
While an anti-Chavez official in the
Venezuelan state of Tachira, Lemagno Flores,
blamed Colombia’s small ELN rebel group for
the massacre, Colombian opposition Sen.
Piedad Cordoba suggested the perpetrators
were paramilitaries.
On Monday evening the Venezuelan government
announced that it was assuming
responsibility for the repatriation of the
eight slain Colombians since Bogota claimed,
according to Caracas authorities, “a lack of
funds” for moving them.
Venezuela “stepped in and this Monday began
the process of moving the bodies to the
morgue in the city of Cucuta, Colombia, in
order to hand them over to their families,”
the Venezuelan education minister said in a
note.
For their part, officials at the Colombian
Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Venezuela
had refused permission for a Colombian
airplane to pick up the bodies in Tachira.
Colombian officials took possession of the
bodies Tuesday in Cucuta. EFE
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
