MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OAS meets in Medellín and Maduro claims he derailed a coup sponsored by US, Chile and Colombia

Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the plan involved both active and retired army officers and was to have been executed between Sunday and Monday

Venezuela's government said on Wednesday it had derailed a coup bid, claiming the United States, Colombia and Chile colluded in a military plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro and install a general and former defense minister in his place.

The claim was made hours before the opening of the OAS general assembly in Medellin, Colombia, where the Maduro regime has lost support.
Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the plan involved both active and retired army officers and was to have been executed between Sunday and Monday this past weekend.

“We were in all the meetings to plan the coup d'Etat. We were in all the conferences,” Rodriguez said, suggesting that government informers had infiltrated the alleged plotters during planning meetings.

He accused Colombia's right-wing President Ivan Duque of “planning coups, assassinations of the president” as well as implicating Chile's conservative President Sebastian Pinera and US National Security Advisor John Bolton in the plot. He also accused opposition leader Juan Guaido of planning “a bloodbath”.

At least six of the alleged plotters had been detained, the minister said in a televised speech in Caracas, presenting testimony from one of them, named as Lieutenant Carlos Saavedra.

Four of the officers were arrested last Friday, a move denounced by opposition leader Juan Guaido in a statement on Tuesday, though no details of the circumstances, or the reasons for their arrests, emerged.

Saavedra was identified as the nephew of retired General Ramon Saavedra, who was arrested Wednesday by intelligence agents in Venezuela's western Barinas state.

According to Rodriguez, surveillance of the plotters and Saavedra's recorded “confession” revealed that the plan envisaged the takeover of three military bases, including La Carlota air base in Caracas.

The plotters hoped to spring Raul Baduel - a former defense minister under late president Hugo Chavez - from jail to proclaim him president, Rodriguez said.

Baduel was demoted last year by Maduro as part of a purge of senior military officers, which also included another general, Antonio Rivero, who the government said lives in the Dominican Republic and was one of the leaders of the coup bid.

“Is it a military coup d'etat against Guaido or against President Nicolas Maduro?” Rodriguez joked.

Guaido is recognized as interim president by the United States and more than 50 other countries after the National Assembly leader said in January that Maduro's re-election last year was illegitimate.

He dismissed the coup claims as a “new novel by the regime,” saying the media had “lost count” of how many times the same accusations had been repeated.

He said he would continue to call on the armed forces to abandon Maduro.

In his speech, Rodriguez accused Maduro's former intelligence chief Cristopher Figuera -- who has defected to the United States - of seeking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for supporting the abortive uprising.

Figuera “turned out to be a mercenary,” the minister said in Caracas.

In a series of shock claims made to US media, Figuera said members of Maduro's family and his government were engaged in money laundering and corruption, and alleged Hezbollah cells were allowed to operate in Venezuela and raise funds.

Washington has imposed crippling sanctions on Maduro's government, holding the president responsible for the collapse of the Latin American oil giant, which has seen millions flee amid widespread shortages of basic goods and medicines.

Russia, Maduro's staunchest foreign backer along with Cuba and China, announced earlier Wednesday it was withdrawing military “technicians.”