One of the participants at this meeting was José Augustin Guevara, another brother of the two Guevara brothers who have already been arrested in connection with the case. The other Guevara family member to have been arrested, Juan Bautista Guevara, is a cousin of the three brothers and is suspected of having planted the bomb on Danilo Anderson's car. Eyewitnesses place him at the scene shortly before Anderson's car exploded.
José Guevara, the eldest of the three Guevara brothers, has been living in Miami since 2001, when he was detained by the FBI in connection with the search for Peru's fleeing spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. The FBI had detained him for attempting to withdraw money from one of Montesinos' bank accounts. It is said that the Guevara brothers were paid $1 million for hiding Montesinos in Venezuela, while he was on the run from Peruvian justice, where he was wanted in connection with corruption and human rights abuses.
José Guevara was released by the FBI shortly after his detention and has ever since been in under FBI protection as a witness.
By James Harding in Ottawa and Andy Webb-Vidal in Bogotá
The Bush administration on Tuesday made plain its opposition to Hugo Chávez's arms procurement programme, in particular the Venezuelan president's plans to buy Russian fighter jets.
“Let me put it this way: we shoot down Migs,” a senior administration official said when asked whether the intended purchase concerned the US government.
The forthright remark was quickly clarified by Sean McCormack, the National Security Council spokesman at the White House, who said the comment simply reflected the fact that Venezuela's arms build-up “is clearly an issue that we monitor closely”.
But the unequivocal criticism of Venezuela's arms purchases underscores Washington's hostility towards the Chávez government and concern that Russia is arming a country viewed by the US as a destabilising force in the region.
At the end of a visit to Moscow last weekend, Mr Chávez said his government would take delivery of 40 helicopters from Russia and he had agreed to buy 100,000 semi-automatic rifles. The move is expected to be followed by Venezuela's acquisition of the most advanced model of the Mig-29 fighter jet.
Reports in recent weeks suggest Mr Chávez wants as many as 50. The senior Bush administration official, who was briefing on President George W. Bush's meetings with Paul Martin, Canada's prime minister, answered a question about whether the US was concerned about Venezuelan arms purchases by saying: “It should be an issue of concern to the Venezuelan people. Millions of dollars are going to be spent on Russian weapons for ill-defined purposes.”
Anxieties have already been voiced in Colombia about the arms build-up in neighbouring Venezuela, a concern to the rightwing government of President Alvaro Uribe as it seeks to defeat the insurgent army of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The US strongly supports the Colombian army. Mr Chávez, a left-leaning former army officer whose government has faced strong opposition for much of the past six years, has said the new armaments are defensive: “Venezuela is not going to attack anyone.” Mr Chávez has opposed the US since being briefly unseated in a coup in 2002 which he insists was planned by the Bush government. The prospective Mig purchase comes at a testing time for Washington-Moscow relations. Mr Bush has grown alarmed at the apparent deterioration of democracy in Vladimir Putin's Russia and finds himself on the opposite side to the Russian president over the disputed Ukraine elections.
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News services are reporting that several high-profile Venezuelan government officials have received anonymous death threat letters ... among them: Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, Supreme Court Chief Justice Ivan Rincon and Interior & Justice Minister Jesse Chacon.
Attorney General Rodriguez says he received a letter contained a macabre reference to a "Christmas bonus complete with vacation, just like the one given to Danilo Anderson."
Special prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who was investigating the short lived coup of April 2002 against President Hugo Chavez, was killed in a car bomb attack last November 18. Rodriguez said that despite the threats prosecutors would continue in their efforts to determine who masterminded Anderson's murder.
According to Interior & Justice Minister Jesse Chacon, investigators are on the trail of those who instigated and financed the attack ... three people have already died during the investigation, a police office and two suspects.
One of the suspects ... 32-year-old attorney Antonio Lopez, the son of prominent members of the Christian Democratic (Copei) party, killed police officer Luis Pavon near Caracas' Plaza Venezuela before being gunned down by one of Pavon's fellow officers.
A police raid on Lopez's parents' home turned up an arsenal that included assault rifles, grenade launchers and anti-tank mines ... as well as explosives and devices similar to those used in the attack on Anderson.
Another suspect, Juan Sanchez, died in a shootout in the city of Valencia ... he was allegedly heading to Maracaibo to catch a flight to the United States.
Guevara brothers, Otoniel and Rolando ... former high-ranking officers in Veenzuela's police force ... have been linked to Anderson's murder, along with their cousin, Juan Guevara. Prosecutors have charged all three Guevaras with "premeditated homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide."
Mr Hugo
Rafael Chavez Frias,
President of
the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Dear Mr President:
We hear the news about your fourth trip to Iran with some concern. We believe that the Iranian regime is using your name and popularity among the Latin American masses, and progressive and anti-globalisation activists throughout the world, to falsely present a similar image for itself.
Your Excellency, this regime is fundamentally different from your government which enjoys popular support that has been demonstrated many times (including the August referendum). This is a regime which came to power by crushing the mass movement of a quarter of the population against poverty and against dictatorship. That movement was led by the workers of Iran. Instead of helping the beginnings of workers’ control over industry they imposed a religious dictatorship which eventually made the workers’ living and working conditions worse than during the reign of the pro-American Shah.
Workers in Iran have no right to strike, no right to form their independent organisations and are seeing successive amendments to the limited Labour Code which exclude ever larger sections from any legal protection. The most vulnerable workers - women - find themselves at the total mercy of the bosses and managers. The situation is particularly bad for women who are the sole breadwinner of their families.
During this year’s May Day celebrations dozens of people were beaten and arrested simply for attending a public rally. The ongoing court case involving activists in Saghez, in Iranian Kurdistan, stands as a clear testament to the lack of rights, arbitrary treatment by the legal system, and the absence of any official accountability. There is nobody in parliament or any government post that is in favour of workers being in control of the way they work and the way they live. At the same time, the regime’s elite, their families, and a whole array of officials and supporters, are amassing great wealth from the country’s oil and gas revenue. While the numbers of unemployed (about 3.5 million), street children (over 200,000), prostitutes (around 300,000) and destitute people reach higher and higher levels, the Islamic Republic’s highest authorities are pouring their vast wealth into foreign bank accounts.
The current high price of oil is in no way benefiting the Iranian masses: there are no special health clinics being set up for the poor, no doctors being brought in from abroad, no extra money is being spent on fighting illiteracy or reducing poverty. In fact new measures are being taken to sell 65% of nationalised industries to the private sector, the Labour Code is being watered down regularly, the range of activities in the ‘free trade zones’ is being expanded, and so on.
We therefore
ask you to question your Iranian hosts about their record on democratic and labour rights
as well as the living standards of the workers and the poor. If they wish to be your equal
they should explain why they have killed hundreds of thousands of the most valiant sons
and daughters of the masses, why they have driven millions into exile, why they hold the
remaining millions in a virtual prison that is being prepared for the imperialists to come
in and exploit in the near future.
Yours respectfully,
Iranian
Workers' Solidarity Network
November 29, 2004
BM IWSN, London WC1N 3XX, England.
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