One of the participants at this meeting was José Augustin Guevara, another brother of the two Guevara brothers who have already been arrested in connection with the case. The other Guevara family member to have been arrested, Juan Bautista Guevara, is a cousin of the three brothers and is suspected of having planted the bomb on Danilo Anderson's car. Eyewitnesses place him at the scene shortly before Anderson's car exploded.

José Guevara, the eldest of the three Guevara brothers, has been living in Miami since 2001, when he was detained by the FBI in connection with the search for Peru's fleeing spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. The FBI had detained him for attempting to withdraw money from one of Montesinos' bank accounts. It is said that the Guevara brothers were paid $1 million for hiding Montesinos in Venezuela, while he was on the run from Peruvian justice, where he was wanted in connection with corruption and human rights abuses.

José Guevara was released by the FBI shortly after his detention and has ever since been in under FBI protection as a witness.

Attorney General's Office to take over investigation from the police

Venezuela's Attorney General's Office has removed the investigation of the Anderson murder from the country's investigative police because of irregularities that have occurred during the investigation. The investigation will now be conducted by the same team that is investigating the April 2002 coup attempt.

One of the reasons for the move is that investigators from the Attorney General's office have raised concerns that the investigative police, the CICPC, has been leaking information to suspects, due to some officer's close ties to the Guevara brothers, who once were members of the investigative police themselves.

Also, a number of irregularities have occurred during the investigation, so that several searches and raids were conducted without the presence of officials from the Public Ministry, as is required by law.

A recent raid on Caracas' Jewish school (Club Hebraica) raised eyebrows and outrage among many Venezuelans and especially the opposition because it is a school for children and any connection with the Anderson case seemed remote at best. Later, though, investigators said that they searched the school because a suspicion had been raised that weapons that were stored at a shooting club, Club Magnum, had been transported and hidden at the school. The police, however, did not find anything at the school. Another reason the incident caused consternation is that at this raid too no representative of the Public Ministry was present.

The investigation will be supplemented by other CICPC officers from the homicide division, who do not have any personal relationship with the arrested Guevara brothers.

Based on information from Últimas Noticias and El Mundo.

Read more ...

Until Thursday 18th November, Venezuelans had been enjoying a period of relative calm. The re-affirmation of President Hugo Chávez in the recall referendum and his government's landslide victory in recent regional voting had persuaded most of the opposition to simply wait for the 2006 general elections.

Then came the assassination of Danilo Anderson. The 38-year old State Prosecutor was blown up in his car by two attached bombs with remote control detonation, after attending a graduate class at the Bolivarian University. Two suspects in the murder were killed in shoot-outs with police during the following week, and two others have been arrested.

Danilo Anderson was leading the case against the "golpistas" (the coup-plotters who had orchestrated the kidnapping of Chávez and the overthrow of his democratic government in April 2002) and was only days away from formally presenting his case, having just issued over 400 subpoenas.

No-one has gone to jail for the coup, although the signing-in book for dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona's inauguration reads like a Who's Who of the Venezuelan oligarchy. The Supreme Court ruled that there was not enough evidence that a coup had taken place; rather there had been a "power vacuum" which the top-dog oil-man happened to fill.

However, fascinating proof of how far the coup-conspiracy stretched has emerged from Chávez' recent visit to Spain, where Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos revealed on state television that the previous Aznar government had actually instructed its ambassador in Venezuela to support the coup.

Also, a top secret CIA document titled "Venezuela: Conditions Ripening for Coup Attempt", was obtained through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request by Eva Golinger, a New York-based lawyer. The memo was written on April 6th 2002 - just five days before the coup.

The CIA has a long history of sabotage aimed at progressive movements in Latin America, from paramilitary terrorism against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua to the assassination of Allende in Chile. The Chávez government's policies of wealth redistribution and spending oil profits on free healthcare, education and housing makes it a prime target for attack.

Golinger also discovered that, since 2001, the US government has channelled over $20-million to forces fiercely opposed to President Chávez. Three-quarters of it came from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental entity entirely funded by Congress and widely perceived to be a CIA-front.

Danilo Anderson, the murdered prosecutor, was trained to follow the money - in this case, from the United States. Venezuela, like most countries, has strict laws about this: it is illegal for any organisation in Venezuela to take money from a foreign power in order to influence elections. (If this seems overly harsh, consider the outrage if, say, Libya were to start funding the Respect party here!)

One such organisation is Súmate, who spearheaded the August referendum campaign against Chávez, and according to Golinger's FOIA research has received more than $3-million through the NED. Despite claiming the money was used "just for teaching", it is also being charged with creating a parallel electoral council in an attempt to illegally influence the referendum result.

In early November, the president of the NED, Carl Gershman, made an unprecedented visit to Venezuela to defend the company's interests. After being refused an audience with Chávez, Gershman tried to lobby both the Attorney General and the President of the Supreme Court to have the case against Súmate dropped.

One day after he left, empty-handed, a letter was released from 70 "international democrats" (most of whom are financially connected to the NED) demanding a halt to the Súmate trial. In response the Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, called for a formal investigation into the NED's funding and activities in Venezuela.

Gershman's visit wasn't totally in vain. Less than a week later, the Supreme Court ruled that Súmate's directors, María Corina Machado and Ricardo Estévez, should be released on bail because they posed no flight risk (unlike the other rich "golpistas" who'd gone into hiding, most ending up in Miami).

The following day, Danilo Anderson was murdered.

Although some on the right-wing are publicly hinting that Chávez himself was behind the assassination (for the same reason he staged the coup, to crack down on dissent) most eyes are focussing on two places: Colombia and Miami.

It is not long since 130 Colombian paramilitaries, dressed in Venezuelan military uniforms, were arrested on a ranch just outside of Caracas. The Anderson car-bombing is very much in their style, as well as that of the CIA. Coup-leader Carmona sought asylum in the Colombian embassy shortly after he was placed under house-arrest.

But also to consider are the Venezuelan "exiles", undergoing military training in the Florida Everglades with their Cuban counterparts for several years now. Most openly call for the assassination of Chávez, and earlier this year General Felipe Rodriguez declared from Miami that he was commencing a clandestine guerrilla civil war.

The US has been asked by Venezuela repeatedly for their help in capturing and extraditing these would-be terrorists, but Washington's only public comment has been that it's "not necessarily a crime" for terrorists to train on US soil - as long as their terror isn't directed against the US.

Terror directed by the US is another matter. After the Spanish revelations, the Bush administration claimed they had indeed "alerted President Chávez to coup plots" - presumably their own! If this attack is a taste of their second term priorities, at least it shows how desperate they're getting.

As always, the ultra-right will end up shooting themselves in the foot, and this unprecedented act of aggression will only serve to radicalise the progressive government, unite a class war-weary country and earn Venezuela sympathy, support and solidarity around the world.

As John McDonnell MP wrote on November 23rd in Early Day Motion 127, the car-bombing "is a further attempt to destabilise the country by those ... who refuse to respect the will of the Venezuelan people". Find out if your MP has signed this EDM at http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=126 and put pressure on them if they haven't!

The UK Bolivarian Circle and Hands Off Venezuela (London) will be having a candlelit vigil outside the Venezuelan consulate, Grafton Way, W1 (off Tottenham Court Road, nearest tube Warren Street) on Thursday December 2nd from 6pm. This will be two weeks after the assassination of Danilo Anderson and we invite anyone who cares about Venezuela, of whatever political stripe, to join us in condemning this barbaric and cowardly act of intimidation. Please wear black.

Read more ...

Washington opposes Venezuela arms build-up

By James Harding in Ottawa and Andy Webb-Vidal in Bogotá

The Bush administration on Tuesday made plain its opposition to Hugo Chávez's arms procurement programme, in particular the Venezuelan president's plans to buy Russian fighter jets.

“Let me put it this way: we shoot down Migs,” a senior administration official said when asked whether the intended purchase concerned the US government.

The forthright remark was quickly clarified by Sean McCormack, the National Security Council spokesman at the White House, who said the comment simply reflected the fact that Venezuela's arms build-up “is clearly an issue that we monitor closely”.

But the unequivocal criticism of Venezuela's arms purchases underscores Washington's hostility towards the Chávez government and concern that Russia is arming a country viewed by the US as a destabilising force in the region.

At the end of a visit to Moscow last weekend, Mr Chávez said his government would take delivery of 40 helicopters from Russia and he had agreed to buy 100,000 semi-automatic rifles. The move is expected to be followed by Venezuela's acquisition of the most advanced model of the Mig-29 fighter jet.

Reports in recent weeks suggest Mr Chávez wants as many as 50. The senior Bush administration official, who was briefing on President George W. Bush's meetings with Paul Martin, Canada's prime minister, answered a question about whether the US was concerned about Venezuelan arms purchases by saying: “It should be an issue of concern to the Venezuelan people. Millions of dollars are going to be spent on Russian weapons for ill-defined purposes.”

Anxieties have already been voiced in Colombia about the arms build-up in neighbouring Venezuela, a concern to the rightwing government of President Alvaro Uribe as it seeks to defeat the insurgent army of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The US strongly supports the Colombian army. Mr Chávez, a left-leaning former army officer whose government has faced strong opposition for much of the past six years, has said the new armaments are defensive: “Venezuela is not going to attack anyone.” Mr Chávez has opposed the US since being briefly unseated in a coup in 2002 which he insists was planned by the Bush government. The prospective Mig purchase comes at a testing time for Washington-Moscow relations. Mr Bush has grown alarmed at the apparent deterioration of democracy in Vladimir Putin's Russia and finds himself on the opposite side to the Russian president over the disputed Ukraine elections.

Read more ...

Top-level Venezuelan government officials receive anonymous death threat letters

Bylined to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

News services are reporting that several high-profile Venezuelan government officials have received anonymous death threat letters ... among them: Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, Supreme Court Chief Justice Ivan Rincon and Interior & Justice Minister Jesse Chacon.

Attorney General Rodriguez says he received a letter contained a macabre reference to a "Christmas bonus complete with vacation, just like the one given to Danilo Anderson."

Special prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who was investigating the short lived coup of April 2002 against President Hugo Chavez, was killed in a car bomb attack last November 18. Rodriguez said that despite the threats prosecutors would continue in their efforts to determine who masterminded Anderson's murder.

According to Interior & Justice Minister Jesse Chacon, investigators are on the trail of those who instigated and financed the attack ... three people have already died during the investigation, a police office and two suspects.

One of the suspects ... 32-year-old attorney Antonio Lopez, the son of prominent members of the Christian Democratic (Copei) party, killed police officer Luis Pavon near Caracas' Plaza Venezuela before being gunned down by one of Pavon's fellow officers.

A police raid on Lopez's parents' home turned up an arsenal that included assault rifles, grenade launchers and anti-tank mines ... as well as explosives and devices similar to those used in the attack on Anderson.

Another suspect, Juan Sanchez, died in a shootout in the city of Valencia ... he was allegedly heading to Maracaibo to catch a flight to the United States.

Guevara brothers, Otoniel and Rolando ... former high-ranking officers in Veenzuela's police force ... have been linked to Anderson's murder, along with their cousin, Juan Guevara. Prosecutors have charged all three Guevaras with "premeditated homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide."

Read more ...