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LatinNews Daily - 07 August 2018

Venezuelan authorities arrest perpetrators of drone attack

Development: On 6 August Venezuela’s de facto attorney general Tarek William Saab announced the arrest of “all of the material authors” of the alleged drone assassination attempt on President Nicolás Maduro during a military parade two days earlier.

Significance: Efficiency is not a word readily associated with the Maduro administration, especially in the economic sphere, but on this particular issue it is moving swiftly. Saab maintained that not only had the material authors been captured but the first “international connections” with the alleged assassination attempt had also been established.

  • Saab did not identify the six material authors, as promised, but he claimed that the location of their hideout in the days before the supposed assassination attempt had been identified. He also said that two of those caught were apparently operating “the second of two drones” from a car.
  • The foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, said that one of those arrested was involved in a pre-dawn assault on the Paramacay army base near Valencia, the capital of the north-western state of Carabobo, on 6 August last year, during which weapons were stolen. The assault was linked to Oscar Pérez, the rogue officer from the investigative police (CICPC), who was killed in a security operation in January this year.
  • The Maduro administration has attributed the alleged assassination attempt to a cell linked to Pérez financed from abroad. Saab did not provide any details of the “international connections” that he said had been uncovered since the arrests of the material authors, but President Maduro has pointed the finger at his outgoing Colombian peer Juan Manuel Santos.
  • Several thousand people marched from the centre of Caracas to the Miraflores presidential palace yesterday in a show of support for Maduro organised by the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) and advertised on state television.

Looking Ahead: The opposition Voluntad Popular (VP), the party of imprisoned leader Leopoldo López, warned that a wave of government repression would follow after the alleged assassination attempt. Saab has insisted that the authorities would have to start getting tougher in the face of “conspiracy plots”.

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