Sniper rifle in a mountain area. File photo by StockSnap.
Two detainees, Starlin Páez Mujica, a Venezuelan military deserter, and María Inés Reyes Silva, partner of the criminal Carlos Rodríguez aka El Conejo, have confessed that members of criminal organizations based in Las Tejerías, Aragua (Venezuela), were trained in Colombia.
This Thursday, February 17, two videos with testimonies of Páez and Reyes were released by Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan Assembly (AN), Deputy Jorge Rodríguez. The two were recently captured during the Cacique Guaicaipuro II operation carried out by Venezuelan security agencies in Santos Michelena municipality near Las Tejerias, Aragua state.
RELATED CONTENT: Jorge Rodríguez: Colombia Seeks to Destabilize Venezuela with Terrorist Gangs
The military deserter had the nickname “El Francotirador” (sniper), and had been stationed in a sector of Tejerias near the regional-center highway “to assassinate people and repel the security forces,” stated Deputy Jorge Rodríguez.
“We traveled to Colombia to receive paramilitary training; we did it monthly,” said El Francotirador in a recorded video statement in which he revealed that Carlos Revette aka El Koki returned from Colombia in November of last year to join El Conejo and resume the creation of a drug-trafficking route in central Venezuela, in association with criminal gangs in the area and also with the Tren de Aragua gang.
RELATED CONTENT: Guarimbas in Canada
A similar testimony was given by María Inés Reyes Silva, who introduces herself as “the mother of the daughter of Carlos Rodríguez aka El Conejo.” She stated, “When he came to collect his belongings at the house where I was, he told me that he was not going to appear for about 20 or 15 days, that he was going to Colombia to receive training with the boys.”
Deputy Rodríguez asserted that Juan Guaidó knew about those training sessions that were carried out in Colombia, in the towns of Cúcuta and Maicao. Rodríguez revealed that since 2015, El Koki had been linked to Voluntad Popular, Guaido’s party. Even that year he received money from former opposition deputy Gilber Caro.
Deputy Rodríguez pointed out that the recruitment of Venezuelan criminal gangs is one of the latest strategies used by Colombia’s Iván Duque government to generate chaos in Venezuela and thereby displace President Nicolás Maduro.
Featured image: Sniper rifle in a mountainous area. File photo from StockSnap.
(Últimas Noticias) by Eligio Rojas
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
