Contradictions and missing links in the Serra case

Police investigations in the Robert Serra case point to robbery or the revenge of a disgruntled bodyguard, but president Maduro has been insisting on his conspiracy explanation of the crime.

After several announcements by the president that he would present the evidence of the conspiracy, yesterday he showed a video taken by security cameras the night of the crime. Six men can be seen walking into Serra’s residence. Maduro said all have been identified. One of them is Torres Camacho, Serra’s main body guard. Another man named Leive Padilla, alias “El Colombiano”, was identified by Maduro as a “known Colombian paramilitary.”

Maduro then explained that, despite “national and international versions that were prepared before the crime and that seek to undermine the investigations,” this was a “terrorist act” with the aim of destabilizing the country. Next week, he said, he will present to the United States government evidence linking the crime to “terrorist groups” based in Miami.

Maduro also showed a different video suggesting links between Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Lorent Saleh, Carlos Berrizbetia, and Leopoldo López. All of them presented in the video as responsible for the opposition protests early this year, the murder of Robert Serra, and also the murder of chavista leader Eliécer Otaiza.

On this last case Maduro repeated his argument that Otaiza was murdered by the conspirators but that the police has still to find the missing link in the case: “we are searching for the key piece in Otaiza’s case, let’s hope it exists,” he added.

Maduro made several other revelations: unknown to public opinion the president of the National Assembly suffered an assassination attempt on October 4. The Minister of Education Héctor Rodríguez was also the target of an attempt on October 1. Maduro gave no further details or evidence of these claims, but he said they constituted part of a series of “continued coups” defeated by the government. He also assured that the murder of Robert Serra has “awakened that humanist consciousness of all of the Venezuelan people.”

However, also yesterday, National Assembly member and leader of the PSUV Freddy Bernal seemed to contradict Maduro’s version, and his own previous declarations, and stated that the murder of Robert Serra was the result of a “disagreement” with his own bodyguard, who hired a gang of common criminals to plan the assassination.

Freddy Bernal: Murder of Serra was an act of terrorism

Former Caracas Mayor and National Assembly representative PSUV insisted on the government’s version that the assassination of Robert Serra was politically motivated and an act of terrorism. He even knows how long it took to plan the murder: exactly two months.

“The murder of Robert Serra was planned for two months. The attackers found the weak points of [Serra’s] security team and that allowed a foreign actor to have access [to him],” declared Bernal.

Serra was murdered with viciousness [saña] and this fact, according to Bernal, constitutes evidence that the crime had the purpose of causing terror: “I am almost sure that the assassination of Robert Serra was a premeditated act to cause terror.”

Bernal also warned that acts like this could happen again in the future and indirectly blamed the opposition for the crime: “I ask the serious opposition that, no matter what our political differences might be, we don’t kill each other.”

He also said that Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe is “obsessed with Venezuela” and that he was looking to “generate political links” with the Venezuelan opposition, especially with Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles.

According to Bernal this “whole lobby” also includes president Obama who is, for his part, obsessed with jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López: “Because Obama has so many problems in the world, he has Leopoldo López in his mind.”

(Image El Universal)

Who killed Robert Serra?

On Wednesday night PSUV National Assembly representative, Robert Serra and his assistant Maria Herrera, were found murdered inside their house in La Pastora, Caracas.

Reactions from government officials were at first cautious: Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres declared that investigations were under way and asked for patience. The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the Mayor of Libertador, Jorge Rodríguez, both asked chavistas to remain calm, trust the authorities, and let the police investigation follow its course.

But other government officials began pointing to “political motives” and blaming the opposition for the crime almost the moment it was made public. The second vice-president of the National Assembly, Blanca Eekhout (@blancaePSUV) tweeted that same night: “Coward and murderer bourgeoisie, today they again spills the blood of young patriots.” In a press conference early Thursday, Eekhout again blamed the “fascists” for the murder: “The fascist murderers that want to sow fear and despair are very wrong. The best antidote for fear is the deep faith, courage, valor, and strength of our people.”

PSUV deputy Eduardo Piñate also hinted at the responsibility of the opposition: “We appreciate the condolences by the opposition, but we also tell them that they are responsible, in one way or another, that things like this are happening in Venezuela, because the sicariato is imported from Colombia, through Gómez Saleh, and all that importation has been made in order to destabilize and demoralize the revolutionary lines.”

The Secretary General of UNASUR, Ernesto Samper (@ernestosamperp), added fuel to the Colombian infiltration theory by tweeting: “The murder of the young deputy Robert Serra in Venezuela is a worrying sign of the infiltration of Colombian paramilitarism.”

A few hours after his first cautions declarations, Minister Rodríguez Torres revealed the first results of a police investigation which he qualified as “based on the principles of maximum experience in criminal investigation.” The results of this investigation, said the Minister, showed that “The death [of Serra] was the product of a macabre assignment. (…) We are in the presence of an intentional homicide, planned and executed with great precision,” he added.

Also on Thursday president Maduro declared that sicarios were behind the murders and that “the investigations are advancing more than we can reveal at this moment. The criminalistics evidence is in line for the identification of the material authors of the crimes. At this time, after talking to the Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres, I can say that we are near hitting hard a band of sicarios.”

But by Friday Maduro decided it was time to directly point the finger at the “intellectual authors” of the crimes, which according to him could include Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe acting with a “criminal band created in Miami and protected by the gringo Empire.”

Maduro also argued that the local “ultra-right” is trying to create and “opinion matrix” linking the murder of Serra to common crime. But that, he explained, “is part of their calculations.” Maduro’s interpretation is that, because government security forces had “detained several persons between Monday and Wednesday who were planning to burn cities such as Valencia and Maracay,” the “fascist minds” had changed theirs plans to the selective killing of government officials. “Fascism decided to kill Robert Serra. This is a terrorist escalation that they have been planning for a long time,” he said.

The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, also went beyond his first cautionary remarks and on Friday declared that the crime was a message sent to intimidate the chavista people and the revolution. Cabello argued that this was no common crime, but that instead “here [we are facing] fascism acting against the Bolivarian Revolution and the people. (…) We are in the presence of a crime committed by political sicariato. It is a message to frighten our young people so as to keep them off the streets. It is the same historical format used by the right and by Imperialism to make our heroes go into hiding. They did it with Miranda [Venezuelan independence hero].”

Cabello insisted that nothing happens by chance, and as an example he made a reference to the “inoculated cancer” theory about Chávez death: “The fascist right hides everything behind common crimes. But the numbers don’t add up statistically ¿why are all the dead chavista [leaders]? That’s the same thing as all the presidents of Latina America of the left having cancer. That is not [statistically] possible.”

(Image El Universal)