Nicolás Maduro’s regime denied on Wednesday that Venezuelan opponents who were sailed at the Argentine embassy in Caracas were rescued by the United States, and said they left the country after negotiations with Chavismo.
After almost 24 hours of that the Venezuelans asylums left the Argentine diplomatic headquarters and went to the US, the only member of the Chavista regime to comment on the case was the Minister of the Interior and Justice of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello.
In his program on the state television channel, Cabello stated that four opponents in the embassy left the country after contacts with the Chavista regime.
“They set up their show and in the end ended up negotiating,” said Cabello. According to him, the mother of the opposing leader also left Venezuela on a flight to Colombia, as part of the negotiation, and the version that the asylums were rescued by the United States is a “report.”
He, however, said he could not give further details. “I can’t say much because I have a word and promised not to say things. But as they went out saying it was an impossible mission thing, so I have to say what really happened,” he said.
Cabello’s version, number two of Chavismo, contradicts the departure of opponents, who would have been “rescued” after an “operation” led by the Donald Trump government.
Argentine government spokesman Manuel Adorni said that there was an “extraction operation” of the embassy’s asylums, and that “there was no negotiation” with the Maduro regime.
“Who said they had no negotiation, it is because it was left out of the negotiation and has nothing to say,” said Cabello, adding: “The permanence of these people at the embassy depended on them. We didn’t put them there.”
By announcing on Tuesday that opponents left the embassy in Caracas, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they are on American soil.
He himself, who was protecting the Argentine embassy after the expulsion of Venezuela’s Javier Milei diplomats, said that despite negotiations with Chavismo, he could not save the opponents, who were the target of arrest warrant in his country.
Cabello also denied that they were five asylums who left the country on Tuesday. According to him, there were only four people at the scene, after one of the asylums left the diplomatic headquarters on August 20 last year and another to surrender to the country’s prosecutor’s authorities in December.
A diplomatic source involved in the subject confirmed to the CNN that one of the asylums “escaped” for months from the embassy in Caracas. Sought by the report, Machado’s team did not comment on Cabello’s statement.
