Venezuela AG condemns US, urges UN intervention

Venezuela’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al Tarek William Saab says the he is hold­ing the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and First La­dy Cil­ia Flo­res, fol­low­ing re­ports of a US mil­i­tary strike and claims Maduro was cap­tured and flown out of the coun­try.

Speak­ing on Venezue­lan state me­dia ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Saab said Wash­ing­ton would be di­rect­ly to blame for “any cir­cum­stances” af­fect­ing the pres­i­dent, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a kid­nap­ping.

“Not on­ly the faith of life of our Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Head of State Nicolás Maduro Mo­ro, and of his wife, our sis­ter and first fight­er, Cil­ia Flo­res, but apart from that faith of life, I di­rect­ly blame the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca for any cir­cum­stances that may oc­cur to our Pres­i­dent and leader of the Bo­li­var­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion.”

Saab ref­er­enced the April 2002 re­moval of for­mer pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez, when Chávez was briefly de­tained be­fore be­ing re­stored to of­fice, de­scrib­ing it as a defin­ing mo­ment in Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry.

“I want to re­mind the peo­ple of Venezuela what hap­pened on April 11th,” Saab said, re­call­ing what he de­scribed as the “vile kid­nap­ping” of Chávez and the sub­se­quent events of April 11, 12 and 13.

He said the ref­er­ence was in­tend­ed to un­der­score the se­ri­ous­ness of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and to re­in­force calls for con­fir­ma­tion of Maduro’s safe­ty, which Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has said re­mains in ques­tion.

Saab called on Venezue­lan state of­fi­cials and pros­e­cu­tors to doc­u­ment what he de­scribed as mas­sive hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions linked to the US op­er­a­tion and ap­pealed di­rect­ly to the Unit­ed Na­tions and in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions to in­ter­vene.

“I ask the Unit­ed Na­tions at this mo­ment to speak up. Where are the in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions that speak up in re­la­tion to these cow­ard­ly at­tacks that have caused mor­tal vic­tims of in­no­cents and that keep Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First La­dy Cil­ia Flo­res, kid­napped?”

He al­so urged the pub­lic to re­main calm and vig­i­lant amid the spread of fake news.

The re­marks came af­ter the Unit­ed States an­nounced what it de­scribed as a large-scale overnight op­er­a­tion tar­get­ing Venezuela, with ex­plo­sions re­port­ed in Cara­cas and low-fly­ing air­craft seen over the cap­i­tal. Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment has de­nounced the ac­tion as an “im­pe­ri­al­ist at­tack” on civil­ian and mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions.

Saab said fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed as in­for­ma­tion emerged on con­di­tions in Cara­cas and else­where in the coun­try.