Venezuelan security forces disrupted this Monday the military operation against Nicolás Maduro carried out on Sunday in La Guaira, near Caracas. With the capture of captains Antonio Sequea, César Pérez Sequea, Jesús Ramos and Adolfo Baduel – son of General-in-Chief Raúl Baduel, a friend of Chávez, today imprisoned for conspiracy – and the death of Captain Robert Colina, alias panther, government it has neutralized, at least for the moment, the so-called Operation Gideon, a military movement with international ramifications that planned to enter the country to overthrow the regime. At night, Hugo Chávez’s successor also announced the arrest of two US citizens, identified as Luke Denman and Aaron Barry.
The operation was carried out in the coastal town of Chuao, Aragua State, by state security agencies. The incidents continue the information that circulated this Sunday about a landing with armed men that was to take place in La Guaira, the port that serves the city of Caracas, half an hour from the city.
Shortly before the capture of Chuao, Major Juvenal Sequea Torres, also from the National Guard, had declared to the digital channel Venezolanos por la Información (VPI) that the nuclei captured in La Guaira and Chuao were part of a contingent of “patriotic soldiers Featured on a first mission, members of a much broader environment of officers committed to Maduro’s departure from power. The older Sequea referred to Maduro and his collaborators as “criminals and drug traffickers.”
Doubts abound in the opposition ranks about the veracity of the information offered by the Minister of the Interior and Justice, Néstor Reverol, about this subversive focus. Sequea and Colina were seen in videos that were widely circulated since yesterday on WhatsApp networks and on social networks announcing a rebellion to conjure up political usurpation and liquidate the dictatorship.
Sequea participated in the failed uprising on April 30 of last year, in which Leopoldo López was released, who then had to request asylum at the Spanish embassy in Caracas. Operation Gideon constitutes at least the sixth attempt to kick the Chavista government out of his disputed re-election of May 30, 2018, unknown by almost the entire international community and by the opposition. They have all been disrupted with surprising ease by the increasingly effective Bolivarian counterintelligence apparatus. Three weeks ago, several National Guard captains were captured at their command posts on charges of conspiracy.
This Sunday, Diosdado Cabello and the Chavista governors of the country’s coastal states had spread the alarm to “the party’s social intelligence” and to the “cooperating patriots”, present in the country’s towns, to collaborate with the authorities. in case of detecting a suspicious circumstance. The network of informants organized by Chavismo was warmly congratulated after announcing the capture of the leaders of this operation.
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