The CNI and the CIA
Venezuela insisted on labeling the Spaniards Andrés Martínez Adasme, 32, and José María Basoa Valdovinos, arrested last weekend about 700 kilometers from Caracas, as mercenaries. President Nicolás Maduro took the lead in this assertion and described them as peaceful tourists who came to plant bombs and to kill. Maduro spoke after Spain’s Foreign Ministry publicly requested official and verified information about Martínez Adasme and Basoa Valdovinos and asked for an explanation of the charges against them.
The president appeared on his television program Maduro + alongside the interior, justice and peace minister Diosdado Cabello, who led a hardline stance against the opposition. Maduro claimed the immediate reaction in the Spanish media was defensive and that they were ready to present their narrative to refute Venezuelan authorities. He alleged that there existed a split between a conspiracy narrative and a victimhood narrative for the alleged terrorists, including audio supposedly from the terrorists parents while they were on vacation. Ironically, he added, the men were simply good guys strolling around who were captured by a dictatorship. Yet he insisted that Venezuelan intelligence had uncovered the plan, the detainees had confessed, and the evidence aligned with years of accusations from Caracas.
Cabello said the hotel where the Spaniards stayed in Colombia was run by a Venezuelan involved in a murder in Zulia state. The minister dismissed the idea that they were merely on vacation. They had not faded into European cobwebs of irrelevance; in his view, European authorities should have acted sooner. In his telling, European media were late, and any meaningful action would not occur in September.
The section titled The CNI and the CIA opened with Cabello noting that Spain’s National Intelligence Center should not be stepping into operations against Venezuela. He described the CNI as an autonomous government entity that he claimed operates on instructions from the CIA. He asserted that one of the arrested individuals had plans that included the killing of a mayor in Bolivar state. He said the suspects were in contact with a man nicknamed Jan, a name coincidentally shared by the Czech detainee believed to be part of a broader group of mercenaries operating in Europe. Cabello added that the CNI had distributed tasks inside Venezuela and had allegedly assigned French mercenaries the objective of seizing the Maiquetía International Airport.
The appearance of Maduro and Cabello on state television Monday night, in the early hours of European time, followed Madrid’s call for the publication of electoral actas that the National Electoral Council has still not shown, despite a Supreme Court ruling validating Maduro’s victory which the opposition disputes. A neutral verification would, in Maduro’s view, confirm the results that many consider settled.
Background
The arrest of the Spanish nationals sits within a larger sequence of events, including the Madrid exile of opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, a legislative move urging Sánchez to declare him president-elect, and American sanctions against 16 electoral, judicial, and police officials whom Washington says were involved in fraud that solidified Maduro’s win and the crackdown on street protests.
For Maduro, tensions with Spain and the United States converge on a single aim. He argues that Venezuela is being pressed to accept a colonial model and views the recent election as the trigger for a violence campaign intended to seize political power. He even likens the situation to a fifth season of a perpetual conspiracy on Netflix. He points to what he calls CIA involvement, while claiming that Caracas has the capacity to capture the head of operations, a military figure acknowledged by the U.S. government. Wilber Joseph Castañeda is described as having served with the Navy Seals since 2009 and entering Venezuela during the July 28 elections, where he allegedly built ties with the Tren de Aragua. The gang is said to have originated in Venezuelan prisons and to have spread across the region. Months earlier, the government dismissed the gang as a media invention. The Tren de Aragua resurfaced within the current crisis, with its leader known as Niño Guerrero taking center stage. Castañeda is portrayed by Cabello as an explosives and urban-combat expert who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia during Iván Duque’s presidency. Under his leadership, three fronts supposedly opened to field 400 armed men aiming to dislodge Maduro from power.