Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo has once again ver­bal­ly at­tacked T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in his lat­est al­le­ga­tions of at­tempts to desta­bilise Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing in Cara­cas yes­ter­day, Ca­bel­lo re­port­ed on the al­leged dis­man­tling of a right-wing ter­ror­ist plot in Plaza Venezuela, Cara­cas, which in­volved det­o­nat­ing an ex­plo­sive de­vice.

Ca­bel­lo spoke about two al­leged ter­ror­ists, one of whom al­leged­ly had plans to es­cape in­to Colom­bia, while the oth­er planned to go through Venezuela’s east­ern bor­der in­to Trinidad.

“This gen­tle­man, alias ‘El Fla­co’, was go­ing to the state of Su­cre,” Ca­bel­lo said.

“Look, one is go­ing to Táchi­ra state, then to Colom­bia. The oth­er is then go­ing to Su­cre state. Do you know where he was go­ing? No? To Trinidad. To­mor­row, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad will say it is a lie, but it is her prob­lem. But he was go­ing to Trinidad.”

Ca­bel­lo said thanks to the in­tel­li­gence ef­forts of se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, a ter­ror­ist at­tack, planned for the Vic­to­ry Mon­u­ment of the Great Pa­tri­ot­ic War against Nazism in Plaza Venezuela last Sun­day, was foiled.

Thir­teen peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed in the case, all linked to the vi­o­lent cells known by the far right as “clan­des­tine units.”

Ca­bel­lo said dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, a bag con­tain­ing ex­plo­sive de­vices, ana­logue tele­phones, three ki­los of ex­plo­sives and oth­er strate­gic ma­te­ri­als were seized and 13 peo­ple ar­rest­ed. He ques­tioned how many peo­ple could have died if the de­vice had been ex­plod­ed.

He said for sev­en months there had been re­ports of a crim­i­nal al­liance among drug traf­fick­ers, con­spir­a­tors, and crim­i­nal gangs op­er­at­ing in Venezuela, who were at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt the coun­try’s peace.

Ac­cu­sa­tions and a strong re­sponse from T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter be­gan in ear­ly June, af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro first ac­cused T&T of har­bour­ing Colom­bian ter­ror­ists, with at least one T&T na­tion­al be­ing in­volved and ar­rest­ed in that coun­try. Ca­bel­lo then claimed Venezuela would vig­or­ous­ly pur­sue those re­spon­si­ble, even in­to T&T wa­ters.

At a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on June 5, how­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned Maduro to stay out of T&T’s ter­ri­to­ry, as any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing our wa­ters would be met with dead­ly force. Ca­bel­lo re­spond­ed by call­ing the PM’s state­ments “crazy.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both gov­ern­ments met af­ter and promised to re­solve the is­sues peace­ful­ly.