[News] Will US harbor or reject Venezuelan terrorists?

Wed Jan 28 12:17:34 EST 2004

The Miami Herald

Posted on Wed, Jan. 28, 2004

2 men caught between 2 nations

Two Venezuelan military officers accused by Venezuela of being involved in 
two bombings and being held in a federal detention center in Miami-Dade 
have applied for political asylum.

BY RICHARD BRAND AND ALFONSO CHARDY
<mailto:rbrand at herald.com>rbrand at herald.com

The case of two Venezuelan military officers seeking political asylum in 
Miami may create a diplomatic bind for Washington, embarrassed to harbor 
men accused of terrorism in Caracas yet reluctant to return them to the 
highly politicized courts in Venezuela, analysts say.

National Guard Lts. Germán Varela and José Antonio Colina, outspoken 
critics of President Hugo Chávez, held at the Krome detention center since 
they arrived on a flight from Colombia in December, have already added to 
the long-rocky U.S. relations with the leftist Chávez.

The Bush administration regards Chávez as a democratically elected but 
dangerous populist who pushed Venezuela into a 2-year-old political crisis, 
forged a warm alliance with Cuba and strongly criticized the U.S. wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan.

Varela and Colima are accused of participating in bombings last February of 
the Colombian and Spanish diplomatic missions in Caracas, which injured 
four people. They are also accused of orchestrating a shooting spree in a 
Caracas plaza in late 2002 that left three dead.

''The U.S. is probably not terribly keen to make a decision one way or 
another,'' on their asylum request, said Michael Shifter, a senior analyst 
at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. ``If they send the 
two back to Venezuela, they'll be subject to criticism. If they decide to 
release them it gives the Venezuelan government a lot of ammunition to 
criticize and point out the hypocrisy on the U.S. position on terrorism.''

MAKING CONTACT

President Hugo Chávez said Tuesday that Venezuelan authorities have started 
contacts with the U.S. government to request the extradition of the two 
asylum seekers. Prosecutors have steadfastly maintained to journalists in 
Caracas that they have cellphone records, witnesses and other evidence 
implicating the pair.

``They're terrorists, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo 
Alvarez, told The Herald in an interview. Venezuela and the United States 
have an extradition treaty.

Through their Miami lawyer and relatives in Caracas, the two officers have 
claimed that they are innocent and that they being framed by members of the 
Chávez-controlled DISIP political police to make them look like ``coup 
plotters.''

They claim theyre being targeted because they were among a group of about 
100 dissident military officers who left their posts last year to stage 
anti-Chávez protests in a Caracas plaza, and because Varela's father, a 
retired general who once commanded the National Guard, is now one of the 
presidents most high-profile critics.

Their Miami lawyer, Leopoldo Ochoa, said the men, who declined requests to 
be interviewed for this story, believe they will be executed if they are 
returned to Venezuela.

He said they will officially file their asylum requests on Feb. 3.

Varela's father, Germán Rodolfo Varela, is running an aggressive public 
campaign in defense of his son and Colina. In an interview with The Herald 
at his Caracas home, he claimed to have proof that the evidence against the 
pair was fabricated and that prosecution witnesses were tortured into 
incriminating the two men.

POLICY PROBLEMS

The case has already caused problems for U.S. policymakers. When the State 
Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, said last week 
that Caracas could be doing more to cooperate with the U.S. war on 
terrorism, Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel shot back by 
invoking the Colina and Varela cases.

``Mr. Black asks for more cooperation to bring terrorists to justice. In 
that same vein, we are seeking better cooperation from the United States to 
bring to justice those who have committed terrorist acts in Venezuela, 
Rangel said in a statement.

``In this area, there has to be reciprocity. It turns out that those who 
have set off explosives at diplomatic headquarters and have murdered people 
and who are sought by the Venezuelan justice system are in The United 
States seeking asylum, Rangel added.

One U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, 
said the department was ''aware of the case'' and ``will give appropriate 
consideration to all formal requests by the government of Venezuela. U.S. 
immigration officials in Miami say they don't comment on asylum or 
extradition requests as a matter of policy.

Underscoring the importance of the case, the Miami lawyer for the two men 
said the two men have been extensively interviewed at Krome by agents of 
the the FBI and the Department of Defense -- unusual treatment for asylum 
seekers.

''They were interviewed about everything related to what's happening in 
Venezuela, national security, their careers. The interviews were extensive, 
they were very lengthy interviews and they happened on more than one 
date,'' said Ochoa, their lawyer.

GROWING NUMBERS

Varela and Colina are among a growing number of Venezuelans seeking 
political asylum in the United States. According to U.S. statistics, the 
number of asylum requests from Venezuelans spiked from 18 in 1999, the year 
Chávez took office, to 899 in 2003.

The president's critics say he is trying to impose an authoritarian 
Castro-like regime in Venezuela. His supporters say he is fighting 
corruption and sticking up for the poor in a country where for decades 
successive governments have squandered a vast oil wealth.

------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
Courtesy of:

The Law Office of Jose Pertierra
1010 Vermont Avenue, NW #620
Washington, DC  20005
202 783 6666
JosePertierra at aol.com
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040128/d54181d0/attachment.htm>