Posada Carriles Associate Confesses Was Paid to Destabilise Venezuela

Merida, July 8^th, 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Francisco Chavez Abarca, who was recently extradited to Cuba, confessed to having been contracted by Luis Posada Carriles to carry out destabilising acts in Venezuela in the lead-up to the September national assembly elections.

Chavez Abarca, on arriving at Caracas international airport last Thursday, was transported to the SEBIN (Bolivarian Intelligence Service) headquarters for questioning.

Footage obtained by Telesur shows Chavez Abarca’s arrival at the airport then it shows him being led away by airport officials after his passport was discovered to be false and that there was an Interpol code red on him by Cuba.

Telesur footage also shows the suspect responding to questions by SEBIN. When asked who was his superior, Chavez Abarca replied, “Luis Posda Carriles.”

“Where does he give orders from? Where is he?” The officer asked.

“I don’t know because I haven’t talked with him since ’97.”

“How do you receive instructions?”

“Through Daniel.”

Daniel Barrundia, according to Radio Mundial, is connected to the Counter-revolutionary Cuban-American Foundation, located in Miami.

The officer then asked Chavez Abarca how he knew there was contact between Barrundia and Posada, and Chavez Abarca responded, “I know how he talks, I know how he acts, I know how he thinks. I know what he could say and what he wouldn’t.”

Chavez Abarca allegedly came to Venezuela to study what disturbance he could cause in order to sabotage the government’s chances in September’s parliamentary elections. In response to a question about what sort of actions he was planning, he said, “Riots. Riots… tire burning… riots in the street…the other thing that could be done is attack one political party… so the (pro-Chavez) parties start fighting.”

According to the SEBIN, Chavez Abarca received his instructions via email, which suggested meeting three people, two of them Venezuelans, in a restaurant near the airport.

Finally, Chavez Abarca said his fee for the work was up to him.

Venezuelan legislator Juan Mendoza and other Venezuelan authorities have publically accused Chavez Abarca of wanting to commit a “wave of terrorist attempts” in Venezuela and he also criticised the lack of coverage of the issue by the private Venezuelan press, saying it was suspicious.

However, the private media have given a lot of coverage to comments by Chavez Abarca’s wife, Karla Trigueros, who accused Cuba and Venezuelan intelligence agencies of forcefully bringing her husband to Venezuela from Guatemala as part of a “secret operation”.

Venezuela deported Chavez Abarca to Cuba yesterday, but said they would continue investigating the case, to discover who he had been planning on working with.

Retired Cuban general, Fabian Escalante, said the Venezuelan government’s decision to extradite Chavez Abarca was positive and elaborated, “This is a character who has been trained by the best schools of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and by the Bin Laden of the Western Hemisphere, Luis Posada Carriles, who is guilty of the attacks against Cuban tourist installations in 1997.”

Escalante said that Chavez Abarca would be subject to a “fair and transparent” trial in Cuba.

After Chavez Abarca was deported, minister for the interior and justice affairs, Tarek El Aissami, told the media that Venezuela maintains a serious struggle against terrorism. “It’s a commitment …to peace, to …the real struggle against criminal organisations dedicated to killing, to creating panic among our peoples,” said El Aissami.

According to Mendoza, Chavez Abarca, a Salvadoran citizen, was the “head of organised crime in El Salvador”.  In the 1990s he was allegedly involved in drug trafficking, arms sales, and counterfeiting. In April 1997 he was accused of setting bombs off in a hotel in Havana, on two separate occasions. He also apparently set off a bomb in Mexico that year and contracted a mercenary, Ernesto Cruz Leon, to carry out terrorist missions in Cuba. Cruz Leon later confessed to setting off bombs in hotels in Cuba, which resulted in the death of one Italian.

Posada Carriles is a nationalized Venezuelan who is wanted for his responsibility for the attack on a Cuban plane in 1976 that left 73 passengers dead. He is currently in Miami where he is being protected by the U.S government, which, going against international law, refuses to extradite him.

A key opposition strategy in recent years before elections has been to cause violent riots, as well as scarcity of certain food items, combined with media campaigns to create a sense of dissatisfaction and insecurity among the Venezuelan population.

Also on Tuesday, president Hugo Chavez announced that alleged drug trafficker Carlos Renteria, who is wanted in Colombia, had been captured by Venezuelan authorities the day before. Renteria is also wanted in the United States for conspiring to import, possess, and distribute cocaine, El Correo Del Orinoco reported.

According to El Espectador, the US state department is offering 5 million for his capture, and on Tuesday Chavez announced that Renteria will be extradited to the U.S.