Venezuela Arrests Another US Citizen in Alleged Mercenary Plot – Orinoco Tribune – News and Opinions on Venezuela and Beyond

Venezuelan Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello reported that another American citizen involved in a terrorist plot against peace in Venezuela has been arrested.

“We followed him, he took pictures of military facilities, electricity infrastructure and state institutions, under the guise of being a tourist,” he said during his speech at the plenary session of the National Assembly on Tuesday, September 17, where he was invited to present the recently revealed mercenary plot.

Following reports of a terrorist plot to smuggle grenades and explosives into the country, an investigation was launched that led to the arrest of three civilians.

Cabello said the three detained U.S. citizens, who all identified themselves as “tourists,” are being held in a safe place. “We respect human rights,” he added.

He also reported that the arrested individuals are related to “escort service” groups linked to gangs linked to members of the defunct Aragua trail criminal gang.

Cabello added that they have obtained information from the detainees, who have confessed that the Spanish National Intelligence Center (CNI) is hiring mercenaries and that those mercenaries are in Venezuela. They already had defined tasks, one of which was to take over the Simon Bolivar International Airport that serves Caracas.

Four Facts About the New US-Spanish Mercenary Plot Against Venezuela

He said that the individuals linked to these cases have the alibi of being “tourists” and that the leader of the operation is Wilberth Joseph Castañeda. “The White House spokesman recently acknowledged that Joseph Castañeda Gómez is an active military officer in the United States, that he is trained to carry out missions in Latin America and that he is in fact being held here in Venezuela,” Cabello said.

Castañeda has been a member of the US Navy Seals, the main special operations force of the US Navy, since 2009. He is a trained individual; he completed a course in Virginia (USA) in group No. 4, an explosives expert. He was then transferred to group No. 7 in San Diego (California), which is the elite group, their special group. He completed a course in river operations, mixed weapons, pistol and rifle, urban and close combat, parachuting, rural combat, explosives, offensive and defensive treatment and offensive weapons. He was in the war in Afghanistan in 2010 and in 2014 he participated in the war in Iraq for 6 months.

Cabello reported that Wilbert Joseph Castañeda traveled to Colombia in 2021, where he made contact with a woman named Deisy Jugles González, who was the partner of “a very high-ranking man from the Aragua Train gang who was murdered in Colombia.”

In Colombia they contacted Belén Salas, María Teresa Clavijo, Carlos Andrade, alias Petare, alias El Flaco, “all belonging to criminal gangs and groups”, with the aim of recruiting people to form a group that would commit terrorist acts in Venezuela.

The terrorist plan involved hiring prisoners and arming them with the 400 guns that had been seized. In total, they had already contacted 14 prisoners. Three of them were shown in a photo by Cabello.

“Are the CIA and the DEA behind all this? The Pentagon?” Cabello asked.

“They accuse us of attacking a supposedly innocent child? He is not an innocent child. Jorge Rodriguez explained Operation Gideon in detail, including the coordinates, the camps, who was leading them, and they said it was all a lie. We even gave the initials of the person who would lead it, Jordan Goudreau, and they denied it. But we have an obligation to defend our country and our sovereignty and nothing will stop us,” he said.

“They want to turn Venezuela into a non-state. This is not just a problem of Chavismoit concerns us as Venezuelans. We work to ensure peace for all.

Cabello accused Ivan Simonovis, a far-right opposition leader in the US, of being responsible for the mobilization of all the weapons.

(Últimas Noticias) by Odry Farnetano

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/DZ