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News > Latin America

Venezuela: Borges, Opposition Leader Behind Failed Assasination Attempt

  • Evidence points to Borges, exiled to Colobmia, as the mastermind of the failed attack on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

    Evidence points to Borges, exiled to Colobmia, as the mastermind of the failed attack on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. | Photo: Reuters

Published 17 October 2018
Opinion

Rodriguez told reporters that Colombia is collaborating with Venezuela's “extreme right" which resorts to burning people, paramilitary training and presidential assassination.

Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said that the government has new evidence that might prove that opposition leader Julio Borges was the intellectual author of the failed assassination against President Nicolas Maduro in August.

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At a Wednesday press conference, Rodriguez presented the testimony of 25-year-old Oswaldo Gabriel Castillo Lunar who says he’s part of "the active resistance" towards the government and an active member of the Guarimbas, groups responsible for the violent protests in Caracas in April 2017 that left more than 100 people killed.

The detainee claims he recruited others who participated in the Guarimbas, to be trained in a Colombian camp. In addition, he stated that Borges partially financed this training.

Borges is currently in Colombia being protected by the right-wing government under newly-elected President Ivan Duque. Venezuela is urging Duque to investigate Colombia’s connection with the assassination attempt so that justice is served in the case.

Rodriguez told reporters that Colombia is collaborating with Venezuela's “extreme right" which resorts to burning people, paramilitary training and presidential assassination.

Wilder Anderson Vasquez Velasquez, alias El Capo, and retired aviation technician Lt. Col. Rafael Ernesto Diaz Cuello were arrested by Venezuelan security forces for passing confidential and strategic information to Colombia.

The communications minister presented an audio at the conference in which the retired military colonel is heard giving information to members of the Colombian military promising to send them more "graphics" and data.

"This traitor is going to have enough time in prison to think if he can, how it is possible that for money or politics, betray his own comrades in arms," said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said that nearly all the logistical authors of this attack have been detained, adding, "I hope the Colombian government" will hand Borges over for trial.

"No one wants Julio Borges to become the Alvaro Uribe of Venezuela. We love democracy," the minister said.

"We insist that there is a sector of the Venezuelan opposition that is willing to work within the framework of the Constitution," said Rodriguez and confirmed the Nicolas Maduro administration is looking forward to continued dialogue with the opposition.

The minister rejected any news that another group may be planning an assassination of the president and calling for a military intervention against the country.

"I hope (Jose Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero will show the WhatsApp messages of Julio Borges, Lilian Tintori, Antonio Ledezma (refugee in Spain) so that the truth of everything that happened around the political dialogue will come out," declared Rodriguez.

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