Ex-Green Berets jailed in bungled Venezuela coup may have been duped
Two former Green Berets jailed in Venezuela for last year’s botched coup are not mercenaries, may have been duped and should be shown leniency by the Maduro regime, said a prominent private negotiator seeking to win their release.
“The Green Berets are innocent of the crimes they are
charged with. They were not mercenaries, they were not part of an invasion,”
said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is working with the families
of Luke Denman and Airan Berry to win their release.
The two men hired by the Florida security firm Silvercorp
USA, might have been duped, suggested Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations who has successfully won the release of captives across the
globe through his non-profit Richardson Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“They were training Venezuelans, no question, on the border.
But they were under contract to train Venezuelans in Colombia,” he said. “They
never intended to cross the border themselves. They were not part of any
invasion. They both ended up in Venezuela, maybe somebody sold them out.
“They arrived in Venezuela with their passports, in shorts
and sandals. That’s not what Green Berets would wear for an invasion. More
likely, they thought they were leaving Colombia to go back home. They also
believed their contract to train Venezuelans was approved by the U.S.
government.”
Silvercorp’s contract for training the Venezuelans was
approved by Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan lawmaker the Trump administration and
various countries recognized as the constitutional leader of the oil-rich
socialist nation.
Details remain sketchy about how the two Americans arrived
in Colombia and later ended up on boats accompanying the armed incursion called
Operation Gideon into Venezuela on May 1, 2020.
A series of stories last year by the Miami Herald, el Nuevo
Herald and the McClatchy Washington Bureau detailed how some members of the
Trump administration had prior knowledge of the attempted coup, and how
loyalists of Venezuela leader Nicolás Maduro infiltrated the ranks of the coup
plotters, leading to a massacre of some invaders.
Adding to the intrigue, Jordan Goudreau, another former
Green Beret who ran the Florida company that trained the Venezuelans, brought a
breach-of-contract lawsuit in South Florida late last year against Juan José
Rendón. The political consultant was a representative in Miami of Guaidó.
And Goudreau’s translator Yacsy Álvarez Mirabal, a
Venezuelan woman with ties to Florida, now sits in a Colombian jail, accused of
illegally importing high-powered rifles and night-vision equipment. She worked
for a former Venezuelan general, Cliver Alcalá, extradited from Colombia to the
United States in March 2020 and accused of being part of a Venezuelan
drug-trafficking ring led by the military and the regime. There are also
allegations that drug money might have flowed through the training camps.
Against that complex backdrop, Richardson is trying to
convince the Maduro government to take small steps toward a resolution, such as
putting Denman and Berry under house arrest in Caracas instead of prison. The
two were sentenced to 20 years in prison for their participation in the coup
efforts.
The new Biden administration appears to be moving at a
measured pace as it reviews policy options for sanctions, diplomacy and
bilateral relations with Venezuela and its partner Cuba.
Some of these decisions are likely to be weighed through a
political prism since the Trump administration’s hard-line position on
Venezuela helped win GOP votes in South Florida.
The reality of Trump policy was a bit more complex. Former
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and longtime conservative adviser Elliott Abrams
pursued a hard line, but Trump confidante Richard Grenell, his former ambassador
to Germany, met with a regime leader in September seeking a negotiated exit for
Maduro.
Grenell’s trip caught the State Department by surprise and
created confusion over who was speaking for Venezuela policy.
The White House and State Department had no immediate
comment on the status of any talks over the jailed Americans, including a third
man, Matthew Heath, a retired Marine arrested in Venezuela last September and
accused of plotting to blow up infrastructure.
Heath’s relatives denied he was involved in any plot and
told local news outlets in Tennessee in late February that he had been tortured
and that they have sought help from the Biden administration.
Richardson declined to discuss details about Heath or the
so-called Citgo 6, a group of American executives from Houston-based Citgo. Its
controlling owner had been Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, although many
of Citgo’s U.S. assets are in the process of being sold under pressure from
creditors.
The Citgo 6 were placed under house arrest this week after
being kept under harsh conditions at a Venezuelan prison.
The six executives had been enticed to come to Caracas for
an emergency meeting in November 2017 and were arrested soon after they arrived
by armed and masked security agents. They were charged with embezzlement
derived from a never-executed proposal to refinance some $4 billion in Citgo
bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral.
Last year, the six were sentenced to between eight and 13
years in prison, even though Reuters reported that documents had shown that the
executives had informed top Venezuelan officials, including three ministers, of
the plans to borrow the $4 billion.
For now it appears the Citgo 6 are more front and center for
the Venezuelan government, in part because it hopes the United States will
respond to its loosening pressure on the six by engaging in talks that would
lead to easing the sanctions imposed on the Venezuelan economy and on top
regime leaders.
A door to those talks appeared to open last week when Guaidó
suggested a willingness to negotiate a deal with the regime that would lead to
free elections in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Maduro said he would
be willing to attend, but there has been little movement since.
One State Department official told McClatchy that the
administration remains committed to Guaidó after he called on the new
administration to ease sanctions on Maduro earlier this month as a diplomatic
olive branch.
“We’re in no hurry to lift sanctions,” the State Department
official said, but added: “The U.S. government has always said that sanctions
need not be permanent.”
One of the sanctions expected to be eased soon as a good
faith sign is a Trump administration move that had banned third countries from swapping
Venezuelan crude oil for diesel fuel. This has led to fuel shortages for
truckers who deliver food and other essentials to ordinary Venezuelans.
Even though the removal from prison of the Citgo 6 is now
seen as a good sign, they had been placed and then removed from house arrest
before.
But when it comes to the two former Green Berets held in
Venezuela, Richardson remains adamant that they are not soldiers of fortune.
“They are innocent of the crimes they are accused of, so
using the term mercenaries is not correct. It would be a good thing to find a
way to get them back home to their families,” he said.
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