The police who arrested the Five participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Venezuelan Attorney General Anderson

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—

IN its November 10 late edition, the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald revealed that according to "a Venezuelan government witness in the investigation into the murder of Attorney General Danilo Anderson," Héctor Pesquera, former FBI chief in Miami, who directed, organized and effected the arrest of the five Cubans transformed into spies in a grand media show, was also involved in the assassination of the Venezuelan official.

By publishing this information, the Miami daily has confirmed what several articles that have appeared in the wake of the assassination in Granma International, linking Pesquera to the many accomplices of the crime.

In a text signed by journalists Gerardo Reyes and Casto Ocando, El Nuevo Herald specified that this witness testified that "an FBI chief by the name of Pesquera and a CIA agent, only identified as Morrison, participated in the meeting in Panama during which the official’s assassination was planned."

The paper identified this "key witness of the Public Ministry" as Giovani José Vásquez De Armas, a "Colombian doctor belonging to the Self-defense Units of Colombia (AUC)" and noted that the meeting took place "between September 4-6, 2003 in Darién, a Panamanian border province."

El Nuevo Herald later indicated that Pesquera, who had been chief of the Miami division of the FBI since December 2003, and who is currently a port and airport security consultant in the Broward County (BSO) Police Office, refused to comment on the matter, through an intermediate BSO speaker, Elizabeth Calzadilla.

Calzadilla told the daily that Pesquera "has not released any comment regarding his work at BSO " even though, as is known, he has participated in the past in numerous radio and TV programs attacking Cuba alongside Cuban Americans linked to anti-Cuba terrorism.

The paper specified that, according to Vásquez, the following were also present at the meeting: Patricia Poleo, a representative of Movimiento Libertad; Salvador Romaní, an old Cuban-Venezuelan extremist currently residing in Miami; ex-police officers Rolando Guevara, Otoniel Guevara and Pedro Lander; actor Orlando Urdaneta, and Capitan Luis García – associated with the terrorist Miami group Commando F4 of Rodolfo Frómeta, tolerated by the FBI; and Israel Pincheski "representing the banking sector."

''There they discussed a plan backed by the FBI, the CIA and certain media presidents to remove Chávez from government. It was stated that the final objective was to kill President Chávez, the attorney general and noted opposition leader Mendoza'', declared Vásquez, according to the daily.

He also explained that a second meeting took place, this time in Miami; and a third in an apartment belonging to the AUC in Maracaibo, Venezuela, March 3rd or 4th, 2004.

Anderson died November 18, 2004 in Los Chaguaramos, Caracas after his car was destroyed by a C-4 explosive device attached by a powerful magnet, of the type used on numerous occasions by Cuban American terrorists. On November 23rd the Venezuelan police discovered a complete arsenal in the house of lawyer Antonio López’ mother, consisting of: 20 kilos of C-4 explosive, an antitank mine, various rifles and a device similar to that used to assassinate Attorney General Anderson.

Antonio López was the individual who delivered the explosives to Pedro Lander, trained a long time back as a DISIP agent, with which he made the devices.

Two more suspects, brothers Rolando and Otoniel Guevara, were captured in the morning of November 26 near Valencia by a National Guard commando. A few days later a fourth, Juan Bautista Guevara, was surprised in a motel in Acarigua with a 9mm pistol, a grenade and $3,000.

Shortly after he died, Anderson was to announce the names of some 400 people who supported the 2002 coup, led by businessman Pedro Carmona, now exiled in Colombia.

In 2004, Granma International published details on the fact that on June 23rd, 2001, Pesquera’s men, infamous for their complicity with the Cuban-American Miami mafia, arrested José Guevara, a former agent of the Venezuelan intelligence service, in a Miami shopping mall.

Known as an anti-Chávez activist, José Guevara had been trying – with his cousin "Otoniel" Guevara – to acquire millions of dollars by kidnapping and blackmailing Vladimiro Montesinos, former Peruvian Chief of Intelligence, at that point a fugitive from justice in his country.

Hidden in the Caracas barrio 23 de Enero, where Oto Daniel "Otoniel" and José Guevara had taken him, Montesinos desperately tried – through his kidnappers’ intermediary – to recover part of the $38 million that he had deposited in the Pacific Industrial Bank in the Caiman Islands.

According to the watered down, compromised, and censored version of the story that Pesquera subsequently told the press in Miami, after three hours of interrogation at the FBI offices in North Dade, José Guevara was authorized to contact his accomplices in Caracas and soon afterward came to an agreement with Pesquera to hand over Montesinos, not to the Venezuelan police, but to the Peruvian Embassy in Caracas.

In a somewhat odd statement to the Herald, Pesquera affirmed that Guevara "betrayed" Montesinos and agreed to turn him in to the Peruvian Embassy in Caracas.

Pesquera aided the blackmail operation of turning in the victim by establishing contacts with the Peruvian government without alerting the Venezuelan government.

The Venezuelan Military Intelligence Department (DIM), which meanwhile had learnt of the presence of Montesinos, frustrated Pesquera’s and Guevara’s plans, detained the Peruvian and expelled him to Peru the next day.

For reasons still unclear, Pesquera not only freed Guevara without extortion charges, but also granted him the protected status of a crime witness by allowing him to stay in the United States... while trying to collect the million-dollar reward offered by the Peruvian government for Montesinos’ capture.

On November 19, 2001, El Nuevo Herald published an AFP cable under the title "Montesinos to make one of his captors rich," which stated that, among others, José Guevara Chacón, still in Miami, was continuing to claim the reward offered by the Peruvian government.

In November 2002, in an interview with the European website Voltaire, Venezuelan parliamentarian Cilia Flores stated that "Montesinos had been planted in Venezuela by the CIA."

In addition, according to an article by Venezuelan journalist Gerardo Hernández, published several months previously in the Venezuelan daily Panorama, $600,000; in other words, half of the $1.2 million deposit that the masterminds of Anderson’s assassination gave to José Guevara in Miami for the execution of the terrorist attack in Caracas remained in Pesquera’s hands.

The reporter claimed that "through a police source linked to the case" he learnt that the organization headed by José Guevara’s cousin, former police officer Rolando Guevara, had already received the other half of the money for the crime. The sum was deposited in a Weston Bank in south Florida. According to the investigation, José Guevara served as the courier of the first installment of $600,000.

Various agents of the Venezuelan Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigation Corps (CICPC) found "telephone receipts, documents sent and received by fax, bank deposits and other bank documents" in the home of Rolando Guevara, in the Morichal development of La Alameda neighborhood.

Several witnesses have testified to having seen Juan Bautista Guevara, three Thursdays in a row, at the Scientific Police University Institute (LUPOLC). Moreover: the same day of an attack the suspect collided with the vehicle of a police officer leaving class.

Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel has said on various occasions that it is thought that the persons behind the Anderson assassination are part of an organization directed from Miami.

For years Pesquera has operated the White House policy of impunity afforded to Miami terrorist groups.

Pesquera is the same "SAC" (Special Agent in Charge) of the Miami FBI who, for months, supposedly did not suspect the presence, just a few kilometers from his office, of 14 of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists involved in the September 11 attack. Meanwhile he was pursuing, arresting and setting up the political trial and conviction of five Cuban antiterrorist agents who had infiltrated Miami extremist groups. Puerto Rican and assimilated into the U.S. power structure, this former counterintelligence officer was FBI chief in Puerto Rico, where he arranged the release of Miami terrorists involved in the case of La Esperanza yacht captured by the Coast Guard en route to the Isle of Margarita, Venezuela, in an attempt on the life of the Cuban president.