On February 5, the President of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, gave details of the dismantling of an attack on the administrative and debating offices of the National Assembly (NA).
Through a presentation of evidence, Deputy Rodríguez explained the arrest of Richard Grillet Álvarez, a former police officer and security officer of the NA, who in exchange for a payment of $5,000 dollars was prepared to place three boxes of explosives in the José María Vargas building, in the Pajaritos Corner in the Venezuelan capital, and in the Hemicycle on January 26.
“For 5 thousand dollars this gentleman was going to assassinate hundreds of people, including the 277 deputies who were in session on Tuesday, including his fellow workers in the administrative building; judges, prosecutors and lawyers of the courts, and journalists; with three high powered explosives”, said Rodriguez.
Grillet also had instructions to destroy a radar base in El Junquito, a strategic mountainous area in the capital city.
Thus, according to Venezuelan authorities, the risk of aggression and terrorism continues to be latent as they add this event to an increasingly long list of assassination attempts, armed commotions and frustrated paramilitary operations, which have been designed to eliminate the country’s civilian and military high command.
Once again, and according to the President of the Parliament, the indications of this operation point to Colombia as a base of operations.
Colombia once again
Jorge Rodríguez presented a video where Grillet gave a testimony in which he admits that he was recruited by an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) named Mariano José Ugarte Morillo, who operates from Neo-Granadian soil recruiting Venezuelan ex-cops and ex-military personnel to incorporate them in mercenary operations.
“I received a video call where I could see Mariano Ugarte accompanied by another person, a man of white complexion and with a strong Colombian accent, telling me that he was in Bogotá and that he wanted to recruit me to participate in sabotage actions against the Venezuelan State”, confessed Grillet.
The link between Grillet and Ugarte began years ago when they shared work in the municipal police force of Girardot in Aragua state.
Rodriguez said that the person who was with Ugarte in the video call was an official of the Colombian National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), without revealing his name.
Several media outlets in Colombia, as well as officials of the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, have made progress in the investigation of Operation Gideon, which was dismantled off the Venezuelan coast last year, and many of the accusations that the Venezuelan government presented eight months ago have been proven to be true according to Rodriguez.
In fact, the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office, within the framework of the investigation of a seizure of weapons that would have been part of the supplies of Operation Gideon, is prosecuting Yacsy Alejandra Álvarez Mirabal, implicated in the events and arrested in September in Colombia. She declared to a media that “the National Intelligence Directorate was clear about Operation Gideon, they knew everything”.
Alvarez Mirabal’s lawyer, Alejandro Carranza, reported that the director of the DNI, Jorge Miguel Padilla, sent the prosecutor in the case, Carlos Roberto Izquierdo Ortegon, a document in which he asked to protect the woman implicated in Operation Gideon. These events indicate that there could be a possible institutional stumbling block between the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office and the security authorities under the command of Iván Duque in the handling of this thorny case.
Rodriguez added that next Tuesday, February 9, the evidence of the frustrated attack will be presented in the plenary of the NA, in order to support a file that will be delivered to the Colombian Parliament so that Iván Duque may be investigated.
The details about Operation Gideon, that are now out there in Colombian public opinion, have put at the center of the debate President Duque openly encouraging armed overthrow and terrorism in Venezuela under the pretext of “liberating” the neighboring nation.
Jorge Rodríguez again reiterated the role of Colombian intelligence officials in the frustrated attempt against the NA this year: “Once again, Iván Duque, in his murderous eagerness, wants to turn the neighboring country into a military camp against Venezuela”.
The accusations against the Colombian president have as a component element the visit recently made to Colombia by Venezuelan fugitive from justice and terrorist Leopoldo López, who met with Álvaro Uribe to explain the actions against the stability of Venezuela.
All of this is added on top of the frustrated assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro in 2018 organized on Colombian soil, as well as the dismantled Operation Gideon in 2020, which consisted in the organization of mercenary camps and the dispatch of armed elements from Neo-Granadian territory to Venezuela.
In both events, the participation of Duque’s government officials would have been key.
Translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau