US mercenary Airan Berry after being captured by Venezuelan authorities in 2020, following the failure of the coup plot known as Operation Gideon. Photo: Screenshot of VTV video/File photo.
According to a report by news outlet Últimas Noticias, “seven men and one woman of US nationality are being criminally prosecuted in Venezuela,” according to records from the Ministry for the Penitentiary Service published this Tuesday, June 20.
It is worth noting that six of the eight Americans detained are being prosecuted for conspiracy and related offenses. Two of the prosecuted have already sentenced to 24 years in prison each: Airan Berry and Luke Alexander Denman. According to the investigation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, both were captured on May 3, 2020, in Chuao (Aragua state), when they came to execute US-backed Operation Gideon, aimed at the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro.
It should be further noted that Berry and Denman are former US soldiers and were hired by mercenary contractor Silvercorp USA—owned by former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau—to carry out mercenary operations in Venezuelan territory, under a contract signed by Juan Guaidó, who had presented himself to the world as the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela.
Últimas Noticias reports that both US nationals “admitted their participation in the mercenary plot, and consequently the Fourth Anti-Terrorist Court sentenced them on May 3, 2021, for conspiracy, criminal association, illicit trafficking of weapons of war, and terrorism.”
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The other defendants charged with conspiracy and criminal association are Jerrel Lloyd Kenemore and Eylin Alexis Hernández, captured in San Antonio del Táchira for entering Venezuela illegally in November 2022.
Jason George Saab, captured in Zulia, is being “prosecuted for conspiracy, resistance to authority, and criminal association,” while Joseph Ryan Cristella, also captured in Táchira in October 2022, is being prosecuted for conspiracy against the Venezuelan state.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
