Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab and his wife Camila Fabri interviewed on Maduro Podcast hosted by President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady and National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores. Photo: Presidential Press.
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, who was recently liberated from illegal imprisonment in the US, was interviewed by President Nicolás Maduro on the third episode of Maduro Podcast. In the interview, aired on Thursday, December 28, Saab shared details of his experiences during his illegal imprisonment of more than three years, first in Cape Verde and afterwards in the US.
Saab, accompanied by his wife Camila Fabri de Saab, expressed his gratitude to the Bolivarian government “for not getting tired when it was easy to get tired” and achieving his release from an unjust kidnapping by the US.
Saab also stressed that the aim of the US government was to collapse various sectors of the Venezuelan economy with the imposition of hundreds of unilateral coercive measures.
“They told me, you have to call the suppliers, you have to tell them that nobody is going to be paid, you have to tell them that they are going to be sanctioned,” Saab said, referring to his interrogators during his imprisonment. “They said you have to give us the routes, the names of the companies, everything, because you have to make the government collapse. That was their favorite word, you have to make it collapse.”
“I remember,” Saab continued, “I told them, but we are in the middle of COVID, and you want to block everything, there could be thousands of deaths. They told me that it did not matter, that the goal was to achieve a regime change.”
However, he emphasized that his political conviction assisted him in maintaining his morale and commitment to the Bolivarian Revolution.
“There came a point where they wanted me to lie,” the diplomat explained. “What they told me very clearly was, there is no more time, we are going to invade. We need you to make some statements and Juan Guaidó is going to ask for military intervention.”
He also pointed out that the US government tried to stop the supply of medicine, gasoline and food to Venezuela during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, acknowledged Saab’s resistance, and highlighted that Saab’s work was essential in “saving lives and stabilizing Venezuela.”
“Our people are applauding and expressing gratefulness for all those actions, and many times even without knowing where they came from, because that is an anonymous thing,” President Maduro said. “You were there resisting with your conscience, with your spirituality, and our people here were also resisting.”
The US attempted to divide the Bolivarian Revolution
President Maduro explained that the Venezuelan right wing and international extremist right “needed to confuse people” in view of the unquestionable innocence of Alex Saab, whose only crime “was to bring to the Venezuelan people what the empire wanted to deny them.”
He pointed out that, in their eagerness to divide the revolutionary forces, those who persecuted diplomat Alex Saab tried to recruit “so-called leftist figures to validate the dirty campaign” against Saab.
“I have to say it here, in this podcast, not only the battered right wing; the United States also looked for supposed leftist figures to use their Twitter and their social networks to validate the dirty campaign against Alex,” he said.
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab was illegally held hostage for 1,286 days, first in a Cape Verde prison and then in an infamous US prison in Florida. He was abducted by the government of Cape Verde under US orders in June 2020 while he was on a diplomatic mission to make arrangements for the acquisition of food, medicine, and medical equipment as a special envoy of the Venezuelan government.
(RedRadioVE) by Victoria Torres
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
