O Globo Reports Brazil Complicity in Attacks on Venezuela Military Base

Brazil’s far-right government was well informed of the plans to attack to Venezuelan military outposts and was in direct communications with opposition leader Juan Guaido prior to the attack, according to a report published by Brazil’s right-wing media O Globo.

The story, citing anonymous sources, claims that there were “high-level communications” between Brasilia and Guaido prior to the incident as well as the known whereabouts of the fugitive perpetrators behind the December 22nd attack on a Venezuelan military border garrison.

Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza has denounced Jair Bolsonaro’s government as accomplices of the aggression for “supporting the violent plans of armed attacks against Venezuela,” as well as harboring the perpetrators.

O Globo’s report also affirms that the original plan was to activate three military uprisings against President Nicolas Maduro on Christmas Eve, under what as called “Operation Trilogy.”  This included actions in the state of Bolivar on the border with Brazil, at a maritime point and at a third location near Colombia.

However, as several sources told the newspaper, only one of the groups strictly followed the plan, which was carried out on December 22nd on Military Infantry Garrison 513 located in the southern border state of Bolivar.  During the attack, 120 assault rifles and nine rocket launchers were stolen and a Venezuelan army trooper was killed during the raid.  

A day after the incident, Arreaza denounced that the attackers came from Peru, passed through Colombia and received support in Brazil.

“It is a coup strategy of the triangulation of governments of the Lima Cartel to produce violence, death and political destabilization in Venezuela. We denounce these governments before the world.”  Arreaza added that to grant refuge to confessed perpetrators is not only a “grievance to humanitarian international law but it establishes dangerous precedents of protection of people that have committed blatant crimes against the peace and stability of another state.”

While Brazil’s government announced last week that it “took in” the five alleged fugitive perpetrators behind the attack and will initiate the procedures to grant them refuge.

According to the statement from the Brazilian Ministry of Defense, the “five Venezuelan servicemen were found by the Brazilian military on its territory on Dec. 26 during a planned patrol of border areas,” which is refuted by O Globo’s report as sources told the media that Bolsonaro’s administration had prior knowledge of the location of the soldiers.