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)   

The Lorent Saleh Videos

The series of videos of the now jailed student leader Lorent Gómez Saleh is the closest Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres has come to showing evidence of somebody actually conspiring against the Venezuelan government.

In the videos Saleh makes claims of contacts with the Colombian Army and of plans to buy weapons, including sniper rifles and explosives, to use them in the “armed struggle” against the Venezuelan government. Part of Saleh’s bizarre plan, according to his own declarations in one of the videos, was the violent occupation of Táchira State’s “banks and liquor stores.”

The government is now in the process of linking Saleh with opposition leaders. Minister Rodríguez Torres and National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello explained this week that they are convinced the videos are evidence of a wider conspiracy by the opposition to destabilize the country.

Cabello declared: “We have stopped a conspiracy plot very well planned by the right. (…) The opposition knows nothing of love and care. The revolutionaries will always defend the legacy and the love of Chávez. The opposition continues to conspire through different forms of irrational struggle against the constitutional government. (…) Today we are again revealing to the country the intentions of a terrorist and irresponsible right. The opposition has made a fool of us all with its conspiracies and now they tried to destabilize [the country] using Saleh.”

Rodríguez Torres said he will soon show another video revealing “all the dark side, all the connections of Álvaro Uribe with drug trafficking, with the paramilitaries, with crime.”

Opposition leaders have rejected links with Lorent Saleh. Mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma admitted he had met Saleh before, but denied this meant he knew about his plans. “If these things are true they are indefensible. Who could defend something so removed from common sense? We are far from [supporting] terrorist and coup plans,” Ledezma declared. 

Rodríguez Torres: Putting together the conspiracy puzzle

Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres presented a second video of Lorent Gómez Saleh, an opposition student activist who was recently deported from Colombia and handed to Venezuelan authorities. In the videos, Gómez Saleh brags about having contacts with the Colombian Army and of having secured arms (fusiles) to start an insurrection in Venezuela. He also expresses the need to “take over”, and even blow up, liquor stores, banks and the local elections authorities’ offices of the frontier State of Táchira.

For Rodríguez Torres the videos show more than the confessions of an extremist activist, they are irrefutable evidence that the opposition is planning “terrorist actions against the Venezuelan people.”

The Minister said that investigations by Venezuela’s security agencies have determined that Gómez Saleh has links with “activists of the extreme right, such as María Machado and Leopoldo López.” Other links include Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe, and even the Colombian Catholic Church: “We have determined that this young man has links with the Church in Colombia, with two deputies well known in the country, who precisely made the link with Uribe. We have no doubt that Lorent is a pupil of Álvaro Uribe Vélez.”

“We are putting together the puzzle of the conspiracy and insurrectional actions that we already wittnessed with the guarimbas, and that they are now trying to revive,” said Rodríguez Torres.

Carvajal’s arrest in Aruba plotted by Uribe and the Empire

The arrest in Aruba of General Hugo Carvajal was plotted by Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe, according to president Maduro.

After Carvajal’s release Maduro declared that the general had been arrested using a “false file put together during the government of Alvaro Uribe, as we will prove in the next days. It was all a false positive organized by the mafia boss Uribe.”

Thursday will be the day, according to Maduro, in which evidence will be released of a plot to “ambush our compañero, with the aim of smearing the reputation of the events which are taking place in our continent, and to blackmail the military of our country.”

General Carvajal is a retired general who has been accuse by the US treasury of drug trafficking and of adding the Colombian FARC. He was appointed Venezuelan Council to Aruba and arrested there on 23 July before receiving diplomatic recognition by the island authorities. He was released on 27 July on a court order from the Netherlands stating the Carvajal enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Aruba’s attorney general denounced however that the island had suffered “economic and military” pressures from Venezuela.

During the commemorations of 60 birthday of Hugo Chávez on 28 July, Maduro reminded followers of the day 60 years ago that had witness the birth “of a prophet that came to break with time and to open a new historical era,” and also of “the battles we have had to fight; the attacks from imperialism and its lackeys around the world, that have tried to defeat the moral and political force of the Bolivarian Revolution, as they have tried to do against general Hugo Carvajal.”