Venezuela Supreme Court attacked from helicopter
A police helicopter has dropped grenades on Venezuela's Supreme Court building and fired shots at the interior ministry in what President Nicolas Maduro called a "terror attack" against his government.
Information minister Ernesto Villegas said the stolen helicopter
first fired 15 shots on the ministry in Caracas, the capital, as a
reception was taking place on Tuesday.
It then flew a short distance to the Supreme Court building and
dropped four grenades, two of them near the national guardsmen
protecting the building.
Maduro said no one was injured as the grenades failed to detonate during the incident.
The attack occurred as Maduro was speaking live on state television to journalists gathered at the presidential palace.
"I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace," he said.
However, opponents on social media accused the president himself of
trying to spread fear to help justify a crackdown against Venezuelans
seeking to block his plans to rewrite the constitution.
Maduro has been facing three months of opposition protests and some dissent from within government ranks.
An Associated Press news agency reporter heard gunfire as a
helicopter buzzed over downtown Caracas but was unable to confirm where
the shots were being fired from.
Call for rebellion
Around the time of the attack, a video appeared on social media in
which a police squad pilot, identified as Oscar Perez, called for a
rebellion against the Maduro's "tyranny".
"We have two choices; be judged tomorrow by our conscience and
the people or begin today to free ourselves from this corrupt
government," he said.
Perez read his statement with four people dressed in military
fatigues, ski masks and carrying assault rifles standing behind him.
A man identifing himself as Oscar Perez reads from a statement on Instagram [Instagram/Oscar Perez] |
Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that this was a "very strange incident".
"It seems on the one hand to have been an isolated incident, with no
response so far from any military units that we can tell," said Gunson,
speaking from Caracas.
"It could be that this is just a few crazy people trying to set off
some kind of coup, or it could indeed be some kind of fake incident that
the government is using in order to justify a further crackdown," he
said.
Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo, reporting from Caracas, said details were
still emerging on what was a "confusing incident" on a "very tense
night".
"The government says they have identified the group [responsible] and
they say they will detain them as soon as possible," she said.
"This is happening at the same time that the Supreme Court announced
that they will allow the government to call martial law in the country
after the protests that have happened here for almost three months,"
said Bo.
She said that the Supreme Court had also announced it was removing
the immunity of lawmakers - "especially of opposition lawmakers, who the
government accuses of promoting the protests that have already caused
dozens of deaths," said Bo.
Maduro has been facing three months of opposition protests [Reuters] |
Earlier on Tuesday, Maduro warned that he and supporters would take
up arms if his socialist government was violently overthrown by
opponents who have been on the streets protesting for three months.
"I'm telling the world, and I hope the world listens after 90 days of
protest, destruction and death," Maduro said in reference to
anti-government unrest that has led to at least 75 deaths in the OPEC
nation since April.
"If Venezuela was plunged into chaos and violence and the Bolivarian
Revolution destroyed, we would go to combat. We would never give up, and
what couldn't be done with votes, we would do with weapons, we would
liberate the fatherland with weapons."
Maduro, 54, was speaking at a rally to promote a July 30 vote for a
special super-body called a Constituent Assembly, which could rewrite
the national charter and supersede other institutions such as the
opposition-controlled congress.
He has touted the assembly as the only way to bring peace to
Venezuela. But opponents, who want to bring forward the next
presidential election scheduled for late 2018, say it is a sham poll
designed purely to keep the socialists in power.
They are boycotting the vote, and protesting daily on the streets to try and have it stopped.
Opposition leaders call Maduro a dictator who has wrecked a once-prosperous economy, while he calls them violent coup leaders.
Maduro, who accuses Washington of backing his opponents and seeking
to control the nation's oil wealth, said the "destruction" of Venezuela
would lead to a huge refugee wave dwarfing the migrant crisis in the
Mediterranean.
Opposition to the July 30 vote has come not just from Venezuelan
opposition parties, but also from the chief state prosecutor Luisa
Ortega and onetime government heavyweights like former intelligence
service boss Miguel Rodriguez.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Rodriguez criticized Maduro for not
holding a referendum prior to the Constituent Assembly election, as his
predecessor Chavez had done in 1999.
"This is a country without government, this is chaos," he said.
The country has the world's largest oil reserves but is facing the
worst economic crisis in its history, with acute shortages of food and
medicine. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting more than 1600
per cent inflation this year.
Analyst Phil Gunson told Al Jazeera there have been a number of
reports and rumours over the past few weeks of discontent within the
armed forces.
"But so far that discontent ... has not translated into a split in
the armed forces, and this is clearly what everybody's waiting for,"
said Gunson.
"Because, if President Maduro can retain the support of the armed
forces, then he seems to be relatively secure in his position - at least
in terms of holding off the opposition demonstrations."
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
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