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)

Will magnicidio theories make a comeback?

Early July this year was the last time the government claimed that there was an extensive plot to assassinate president Maduro. The recent murder case of the National Assembly representative Robert Serra seems to be reviving claims of “selective killings,” and Maduro suggested yesterday that the list of supposed targets could be longer.

Despite recent police investigations that point to Serra’s security circle, Maduro insisted that the murder of the PSUV leader had political motives and that it’s part of a series of selective killings which could next target “a very important leader of the Revolution.”

The sordid double plot against Venezuela

José Vicente Rangel believes that “every day the existence of a double and sordid plot [conjura] against Venezuela is becoming more evident.”

The “double” character of the plot comes from the fact that it combines conspiracies plotted outside the country and local agents of the opposition.

“The link between internal factors, the political opposition, financial agents, media, and international powers has never before had this operational capacity and clarity in its objectives,” wrote Rangel for the local newspaper Últimas Noticias.

This high degree of coordination “has lethal effects that affect citizens in their daily life,” he explained. “What is plotted ordered from the outside, immediately effects inside [of the country].”

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)   

Venezuela has been the victim of an Imperialist violence strategy, same as Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq

During a military ceremony yesterday, Maduro explained that the new “military doctrine” of Venezuela is a legacy of Chávez, and is based on anti-imperialist principles in order to face what he claims is a permanent strategy of aggression against Venezuela expressed through economic, psychological, and mercenary wars. According to Maduro the opposition protests of the beginning of this year are no more than “neo-fascist actions of the extreme right” backed by the Empire.

Here are excerpts from the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias note:

Caracas, 30 Sep. AVN.- The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, denounced Tuesday that the strategy of division of the people, and the placing of violent groups, that the Empire applies in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, is the same that it tried to impose on Venezuela during the first semester of the year with the neo-fascist actions of the right.

“Venezuela was the object of an aggression by internal, pro-imperialist forces. These forces, in other places of the world such as Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, have accomplished their objectives of harming the people,” expressed the president during a ceremony commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Strategic Operational Command of the National Armed Forces (CEOFANB).

He indicated that “Syria was almost filled with heavily armed terrorist groups and bands financed by the governments of NATO, particularly by the United States, and they raised a monster, similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, or Al-qaeda.”

These terrorist cells were “created, funded, and armed by the United States Empire and NATO in the Shia regions of Syria, Iraq, and all of the Middle East. But who created this monster?”

(…)

The president also mentioned the conflict in Ukraine, “where neo-Nazi forces have been encouraged, are the heirs of those who did not want Ukraine to form part of the USSR and, at that time, welcomed Hitler’s troops.”

(…)

Maduro explained that the characteristics of the conflicts in the countries he mentioned are the same that the extreme right tried to implement in Venezuela under the name of “la salida”, which was no more than a “violent and neo-fascist attack against democracy and the Venezuelan people, with the objective of positioning violent groups [inside the country] and beginning a process of division of the country, its dismemberment.”

He stressed that “thanks to the institutional and humanist cohesion of our government, our State, the Armed Forces, the CEOFANB, and the people, peace was triumphant in our country.” However he urged all Venezuelans, and the military, to “be fully conscious of the steps taken by the violent sectors and of the things we have accomplished.”

“The new body of the Republic is being built in the midst of these battles, and the new muscle, for transcending the times, becomes stronger with every battle. The battle against the guarimbas [street barricades] and the violent attempts to disintegrate [the country] have been won.”

He also urged for the continuation of the political and institutional development of the country, free “from the violent surge and the destruction of these groups nourished by Colombian paramilitarism.”

(Image AVN)