Opposition plans Kidnappings and Assassinations

State security services SEBIN have detained Luis Alberto Navas Medina and Eligio Arriaz, accused of planning the assassination of the ex-president of Venezuela’s Central Bank, Nelson Merentes. SEBIN’s director, Gustavo González López, claims both detainees are militants of the opposition party Voluntad Popular (VP).

González López declared that these two “terrorists” are “allies” of VP leader Freddy Guevara, who has taken refuge in Chile’s embassy in Caracas since November 2017. VP is the party of the opposition leader Leopoldo López, currently in house arrest.

At one point in his declarations González López claimed that the two “terrorists” wanted to kidnap Nelson Merentes and ransom him for money to finance VP, later he says that their real objective was to kill Merentes as part of “selective assassinations” plan which would include other government officials. González López showed a video, also posted on his Twitter account (@GJGonzalezLopez), of the interrogation of one of the detainees, Luis Alberto Navas, in which he says that Freddy Guevara was the mastermind behind the plan.

On Thursday, president Maduro declared that security services had discovered the plan. “We have recordings, videos, testimonies, and confessions from [militants] of the terrorist party VP, they were preparing the kidnaping and the attack,” said the president.

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias claims that the supposed plan to kidnap, or assassinate, Merentes is part of “selective killings” of chavista leaders by an opposition that “has constantly used terror as a political strategy, as they did in April 2002, when 19 Venezuelans were killed and dozens wounded, with the aim of generating a constitutional breach and justifying a coup d’état.”

Images showing alleged links between Nava and several VP leaders were also posted by González López: