Venezuelan Banker Given Asylum by US Found in Panama Papers

[Judi Lynn]

65. For christssake, these are COLOMBIAN people who moved to Venezuela, and there are NOT 1,000s of them

as the "news"paper says officials said there were more than 1,000. That's ONE thousand, ONE.

We have been reading for years and years and years about Colombians moving to both Venezuela AND Ecuador, and Venezuela was very decent about taking them in, and taking care of them for ages, until the right-wing death squads started bringing in more violence than they could handle.

One very clear example was over 100 Colombian paramilitaries which came across the border and lived at a ranch owned by Roberto Alonso, not too far from Caracas. Following up on a tip, the Venezuelan government discovered these creeps living in quanset huts on the property, with uniforms, and the plans to hold up a national guard armory and steal enough weapons to arm one thousand people, and proceed on to Miraflores, where they would kill Chavez. This was revealed in interrogations with the men, some of whom had been members of the Colombian military, at one time. After they were captured, and the truth determined, Hugo Chavez and Alvaro Uribe had a meeting which lasted over 3 hours, and during that meeting Uribe apologized for this nasty situation.

Here's one article I just located regarding this situation:

Venezuela's Chavez pardons Colombian prisoners accused in plot

By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:11 p.m. August 30, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez on Thursday pardoned dozens of Colombians imprisoned in Venezuela on charges of involvement in an alleged 2004 plot against his government.
The order to free the 41 prisoners took effect with its publication in the government's official gazette, dismissing their convictions on charges of military rebellion.

Chavez announced his decision to free the prisoners last week as a goodwill gesture during his efforts to help broker an unrelated prisoner and hostage exchange between Colombia's government and leftist rebels.

In May 2004, 118 Colombians were arrested at a ranch outside Caracas. Authorities said they were wearing Venezuelan military uniforms and were suspected of belonging to paramilitary group that was plotting to create chaos in the country and assassinate Chavez.

. . .

Chavez said last week that the pardon applied to all the Colombians except those implicated in the death of a man whose body was found buried near the ranch.

Chavez was preparing to travel to Colombia on Friday for talks with President Alvaro Uribe on his offer to help facilitate an exchange of hundreds of imprisoned rebels for about 45 hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

More:
http://legacy.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/world/20070830-1511-venezuela-colombia.html

More info:

Alleged Colombian Paramilitaries
On May 9, 2004, Venezuelan police raided a ranch in Buruta, on the outskirts of the capital Caracas, arresting fifty-five Colombian men. The ranch was owned by Roberto Alonso, a Cuban exile active in the anti-Castro and a leader of the Venezuelan opposition group Bloque Democrático Shortly thereafter, they arrested 71 more at the neighboring ranch owned by Gustavo Cisneros, a Cuban-Venezuelan Chávez opponent. Venezuela reported that one of the detainees said they had been offered 500,000 Colombian pesos to work on the farm, before being informed upon their arrival that they would have to prepare for an attack on a National Guard base, with the goal of stealing weapons to potentially arm a 3,000-strong militia. <1>

According to other detainees and the Colombian families of many of them, most of those arrested were apparently unemployed poor peasants, some from the Cúcuta area, many of whom had at some point in their lives done military service in Colombia and thus qualified as reservists. They'd have been promised to work in Venezuela but were later betrayed <2>.

The families of 68 detainees announced to the Colombian press in June 2004 their intention of travelling to Venezuela to argue for their relatives freedom, claiming that they fell to a setup. <3>. Another relative told the Venezuelan opposition press that the prisoners were being mistreated while in captivity <4>. The official press reported a government denial of this claim.

The family of a Venezuelan National Guard Captain arrested and accused of being implicated in the supposed paramilitary plot likewise denounced in the opposition press the possibility of a political persecution against those that would not share the Venezuelan revolutionary process. He was said not to be recognized when he was presented to the Colombian detainees.<5>.

Some women and underaged children were also included among those captured suspected paramilitaries. The latter were speedily repatriated to Colombia by Venezuelan authorities <6>. The alleged paramilitaries were caught wearing Venezuelan Army uniforms and apparently had a single gun in their possession in the immediate area. At least two (other sources speak of between three and five) suspected paramilitary commanders were also reported to be in custody.

. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daktari_Ranch_affair

[center]



Improvised observation post at the farm where Colombian paramilitaries
were captured last Sunday.
Credit: Carlos Rios - Radio Nacional de Venezuela




Barracs at the property of opposition activist Robert Alonso located
in the outskirts of Caracas. Colombian paramilitaries lived there for
46 days in preparation for attacks on military bases.
Credit: Carlos Rios - Radio Nacional de Venezuela[/center]
I thought you were trying to claim actual Venezuelan citizens were "fleeing" Venezuela. That wasn't the case, was it?

Don't you ever take the time to follow what is happening? Don't you have any grasp of what has been going on?

If you made any effort at all, to start paying attention, and researching, you would see things in a totally different way. You would not be a reactionary, you would have some degree of awareness, it would change your life.