Venezuela: Consulate officials in US threatened
Venezuela: Consulate officials in US threatened
By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press
8:58 a.m., Jan. 15, 2012
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan exiles with links to terrorism have threatened officials at the South American country's consulate in Miami, the foreign minister said Sunday.
Nicolas Maduro did not offer evidence of his claims, which came shortly after President Hugo Chavez said his government would close the consulate in response Washington's expulsion of a Venezuelan diplomat.
Maduro told the state-run AVN news agency that "a group of organizations bringing together Venezuelans who fled justice" in their homeland "have threatened not only the consul but the personnel at out consulate."
Maduro singled out a group called Venezuelan Persecution Victims in Exile, which had taken part in public demonstrations against the consul. Maduro said it sought to provoke the diplomatic spat and noted that the group's leader, Jose Antonio Colina, is wanted in Venezuela on terrorism-related charges of attacking the Spanish Embassy and Colombian consulate in 2003.
More:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/15/venezuela-consulate-officials-in-us-threatened/
Jose Antonio Colina, leader of the expat. group, Venezuelan Persecution Victims in Exile in Florida, standing with right-wing radical reactionary Cuban Republican Congressman Mario Dias-Balart. (Dias-Balart's father was an attorney for United Fruit in Cuba, then a member of the cabinet of butcher-killer/Mafia cohort, dictator Fulgencio Batista until the revolution threw them out of office.)
