The Minister of the Interior of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, has announced the arrest of more than a dozen alleged “mercenaries” involved in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro, a plan that would have been orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) and the Spanish National Intelligence Center (CNI).
He expressed this in statements to Venezuelan public television, where he took the opportunity to also point out the participation of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the alleged plot.
In this sense, he stressed that the plot is part of a “policy of imperialism that, with its elements of action, has been directed by the CIA and the CNI.” “It is the Spanish National Intelligence Center that is at the forefront of the operation; in the recruitment, in the search and in the supply of weapons,” he said.
“We announced this and they immediately came forward (…) and said they had nothing to do with it. It is logical that they say they have nothing to do with it, but we are obliged to inform, to tell the truth,” he clarified.
Cabello has indicated that the opposition leader María Corina Machado is already aware of this attempt to “destabilize” the Caribbean country and has also accused the former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe and the former president of the Venezuelan National Assembly Julio Borges of being involved.
According to him, all the foreigners arrested speak Spanish and some had photographs of “strategic areas”, such as refineries, on their mobile phones. In addition, the Venezuelan security forces have seized the parts that would correspond to some 24 assault rifles.
