Confessions as evidence and paramilitaries

This week Maduro’s government and official media have insisted on presenting the confessions of José Pérez Venta and Carlos Trejo, the main suspects in the murder case of Liana Hergueta, as evidence, the only presented so far, that there is a broad conspiracy by Colombian paramilitaries and the local opposition to destabilize the country.

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN) is refuting the claim made by “national and international media that the [Hergueta] case was a police [sic] case, apparently isolated, of a murder of a women for money, when in truth it is the evidence of a direct relationship between right-wing groups in Venezuela and Colombian paramilitarism and its criminal practices.”

For AVN Pérez Venta’s confessions have “clearly stablished this criminal relation of antichavista sectors with paramilitary groups of Colombia.”

The PSUV governor of Aragua Tareck El Aissami also revealed in a news conference this week that Pérez Venta had confessed to being part of a plan to murder Daniela Cabello, the daughter of the president of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello.

El Aissami said that this newly revealed part of Pérez Venta’s confession is evidence that “the opposition is engaged in the most disgusting violent plans against the country.”

However the pro-government news portal La Tabla (here reposted by Aporrea) reports that Andrea González and Dany Abreu, the two organizers of the plan to murder Daniela Cabello according to Pérez Venta, are a pastry cook and a student of electrical engineering with no links to the case, apart from Pérez Venta having named them.