Post by scumbuster on Jul 21, 2016 10:55:09 GMT -5
Venezuela Asserts Jailed US Mormon Guilty of Political Assassination
CARACAS -- Venezuela’s Interior minister Gustavo Gonzalez has charged that Joshua Anthony Holt, a 24 year old U.S. citizen jailed in Venezuela on weapons charges, is tied to a recent political assassination.
"Under different facades, the secret services of the United States are seeking to achieve goals in an unconventional war through interventionist actions that stimulate the formation of criminal paramilitary gangs in housing complexes," Gonzalez said in televised remarks. "We won't permit the dark interests of capitalism, backed by the criminal gangs, to suffocate the stability and peace of the country."
Venezuela is in the midst of a severe crisis marked by widespread food shortages and triple-digit inflation that President Nicolas Maduro almost daily blames on an economic war being waged by the United States and the Opposition.
Holt, Gonzalez said, was acting under the orders of “the boss of the paramilitary gang known as Los Sindicalistas” (“The Union Organizers” in English), calling Holt by the alias "the Gringo."
“Observatorio del Delito Organizado”, a local NGO that keeps track of such gangs, does not have an entry for “Los Sindicalistas”, although murder is extremely common in Venezuela, one of the world’s most dangerous countries with some 28,000 homicides a year.
Gonzalez said that Holt’s wife of a few weeks, Tamara, who is also jailed on weapons charges, was also in on the assassination of Omar Molina, an official with PSUV, Venezuela’s ruling party, founded by Hugo Chavez himself.
According to Holt's mother, Holt had just completed a two-year mission with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington state. He learned to speak Spanish while working with Hispanic immigrants during his time there, his mother said. She said her son met Caleno through the internet when he went looking for a Spanish-speaking Mormon to help polish his Spanish, and the couple fell in love during their sessions online.
CHAVISTA HITS
Several high-profile members of the PSUV have been murdered since 2014 but perhaps the most prominent case was that of National Assembly lawmaker Robert Serra, killed and tortured inside his own house in the prominent pro-Chavez neighborhood of La Pastora, downtown Caracas. That case was however reported by the government as closed and the killers sent to jail. This year alone, before the Holt case, a PSUV town mayor and a councilman were killed in two incidents separated only by days in two different cities of the Venezuelan Andes.
CHARGES UP A NOTCH
The American was already looking at a 12 year sentence on the original charges and now he can serve up to 30 years, if the Venezuelan government can prove the murder case.
Holt and wife were originally arrested on June 30th on weapons charges. In the apartment they were living in, National Police say they recovered an AK-47 assault rifle, a hand grenade and a facsimile of an M-4 assault rifle, as well as other articles.
LDS ELDER AND HIT MAN?
Gonzalez said PSUV ranking member Molina was killed April 11th. However, records show that Holt, an elder in the Later Day Saints church, only arrived in Venezuela in June to marry 25 year old Tamara Belén Caleño, who he had met in online Spanish classes. They were waiting for a U.S. visa so the pair could travel to his home near Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gonzalez also said Wednesday that Tamara held dual citizenship, Ecuadorian and Venezuelan, when she married Holt.
Additionally, minister Gonzalez said Holt and wife were arrested during one of the government dragnets known as OLP (Operation to Liberate the People) in the government housing projects of Ciudad Socialista Caribia where police killed six other people and arrested seven, including the couple.
However, there was no OLP reported in that area on June 30th, the day of the American’s arrest, and especially not one with such a high body count.
It must be noted that OLP operations are particularly bloody (a body count of seven is not unheard of) and that human rights NGO’s have denounced them as being in violation of subject’s human rights as put forward in the Venezuelan Constitution.
Gonzalez said the OLP on June 30th was ordered to try and capture the killers of Molina, but at the time of Holt’s arrest by the National Police, it was reported he was captured during routine patrolling, stopped, and put in custody only after he ran into the apartment where the weapons were reportedly found.
SOCIALIST CITY
The fact that Holt was arrested -- and supposedly armed -- in a hub of pro-government activity has raised eyebrows, according to one diplomatic source. Ciudad Socialista Caribia is a housing project built by the government of Hugo Chavez. Chavez himself inaugurated it and promised to build several more like it. The project is populated mostly by government officials and pro-government militants. The American arrived in Venezuela at some point in June with the intention to marry a local woman also named in the case against him.
Holt is still in el Helicoide prison. Laura Lara is the Caracas metropolitan area prosecutor charged by the Prosecutor General’s office with Holt’s case. The office said he was captured “in flaganti”, meaning during the commission of the alleged crime.
laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2416963&CategoryId=10717
CARACAS -- Venezuela’s Interior minister Gustavo Gonzalez has charged that Joshua Anthony Holt, a 24 year old U.S. citizen jailed in Venezuela on weapons charges, is tied to a recent political assassination.
"Under different facades, the secret services of the United States are seeking to achieve goals in an unconventional war through interventionist actions that stimulate the formation of criminal paramilitary gangs in housing complexes," Gonzalez said in televised remarks. "We won't permit the dark interests of capitalism, backed by the criminal gangs, to suffocate the stability and peace of the country."
Venezuela is in the midst of a severe crisis marked by widespread food shortages and triple-digit inflation that President Nicolas Maduro almost daily blames on an economic war being waged by the United States and the Opposition.
Holt, Gonzalez said, was acting under the orders of “the boss of the paramilitary gang known as Los Sindicalistas” (“The Union Organizers” in English), calling Holt by the alias "the Gringo."
“Observatorio del Delito Organizado”, a local NGO that keeps track of such gangs, does not have an entry for “Los Sindicalistas”, although murder is extremely common in Venezuela, one of the world’s most dangerous countries with some 28,000 homicides a year.
Gonzalez said that Holt’s wife of a few weeks, Tamara, who is also jailed on weapons charges, was also in on the assassination of Omar Molina, an official with PSUV, Venezuela’s ruling party, founded by Hugo Chavez himself.
According to Holt's mother, Holt had just completed a two-year mission with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington state. He learned to speak Spanish while working with Hispanic immigrants during his time there, his mother said. She said her son met Caleno through the internet when he went looking for a Spanish-speaking Mormon to help polish his Spanish, and the couple fell in love during their sessions online.
CHAVISTA HITS
Several high-profile members of the PSUV have been murdered since 2014 but perhaps the most prominent case was that of National Assembly lawmaker Robert Serra, killed and tortured inside his own house in the prominent pro-Chavez neighborhood of La Pastora, downtown Caracas. That case was however reported by the government as closed and the killers sent to jail. This year alone, before the Holt case, a PSUV town mayor and a councilman were killed in two incidents separated only by days in two different cities of the Venezuelan Andes.
CHARGES UP A NOTCH
The American was already looking at a 12 year sentence on the original charges and now he can serve up to 30 years, if the Venezuelan government can prove the murder case.
Holt and wife were originally arrested on June 30th on weapons charges. In the apartment they were living in, National Police say they recovered an AK-47 assault rifle, a hand grenade and a facsimile of an M-4 assault rifle, as well as other articles.
LDS ELDER AND HIT MAN?
Gonzalez said PSUV ranking member Molina was killed April 11th. However, records show that Holt, an elder in the Later Day Saints church, only arrived in Venezuela in June to marry 25 year old Tamara Belén Caleño, who he had met in online Spanish classes. They were waiting for a U.S. visa so the pair could travel to his home near Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gonzalez also said Wednesday that Tamara held dual citizenship, Ecuadorian and Venezuelan, when she married Holt.
Additionally, minister Gonzalez said Holt and wife were arrested during one of the government dragnets known as OLP (Operation to Liberate the People) in the government housing projects of Ciudad Socialista Caribia where police killed six other people and arrested seven, including the couple.
However, there was no OLP reported in that area on June 30th, the day of the American’s arrest, and especially not one with such a high body count.
It must be noted that OLP operations are particularly bloody (a body count of seven is not unheard of) and that human rights NGO’s have denounced them as being in violation of subject’s human rights as put forward in the Venezuelan Constitution.
Gonzalez said the OLP on June 30th was ordered to try and capture the killers of Molina, but at the time of Holt’s arrest by the National Police, it was reported he was captured during routine patrolling, stopped, and put in custody only after he ran into the apartment where the weapons were reportedly found.
SOCIALIST CITY
The fact that Holt was arrested -- and supposedly armed -- in a hub of pro-government activity has raised eyebrows, according to one diplomatic source. Ciudad Socialista Caribia is a housing project built by the government of Hugo Chavez. Chavez himself inaugurated it and promised to build several more like it. The project is populated mostly by government officials and pro-government militants. The American arrived in Venezuela at some point in June with the intention to marry a local woman also named in the case against him.
Holt is still in el Helicoide prison. Laura Lara is the Caracas metropolitan area prosecutor charged by the Prosecutor General’s office with Holt’s case. The office said he was captured “in flaganti”, meaning during the commission of the alleged crime.
laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2416963&CategoryId=10717