Chavez Denounces Plot to Kill Rival in Repeat of 2006 Vote

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he had evidence of a plot to kill the opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, six years after making a similar claim ahead of the previous election.

The director of the secret service agency, known as Sebin, met with Capriles’s team to see how they could help protect him, Chavez said last night in a phone call broadcast on state television, without giving details.

“There’s information out there that they want to attempt to kill him and it’s not the government,” Chavez said. “It’s information we’ve taken seriously because of the source from which it comes.”

Chavez, who is battling cancer, is seeking to extend his 13 years in power by a further six years in an election scheduled for Oct. 7. Before the 2006 election, Chavez said security forces had broken up a plot by “radical fascists” to assassinate opposition candidate Manuel Rosales. Police recovered a rifle and telescopic lenses, though Chavez declined to say if any arrests had been made.

This year’s alleged assassination plot comes after state media controlled by Chavez accused Capriles of offenses ranging from participating in a Zionist conspiracy to joining a Nazi-inspired effort to wipe out blacks and the poor. Unidentified gunmen disrupted a campaign stop by Capriles on March 4, firing into the air and injuring one person.

Threat or Warning

“Yesterday someone on television was saying that they had information that someone was preparing an assassination attempt against me,” Capriles said in comments broadcast on Globovision today. “Quite honestly, I’ll tell you one doesn’t know if that’s a warning or a threat.”

Chavez and Capriles often refuse to mention each other’s names in interviews.

Chavez’s announcement yesterday “borders on the irresponsible,” and reflected his attitude to rising crime in the country, Capriles said on his Twitter account.

The murder rate in Venezuela has almost tripled to 67 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in South America, since Chavez took power in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory. The government says the murder rate is lower.

“When you’re in an important position such as leading a country, you need to speak the language of peace,” Capriles said. “It’s not about offering security to me, you need to offer security to all the people you serve.”

Checkpoint Murder

Chavez said last night that 12 policemen suspected of murdering the Chilean consul’s daughter in Maracaibo on March 16 must pay for what they did “with the full weight of the law.”

The attorney general’s office said March 17 it arrested the officers suspected of killing Karen Berendique, 19, at a checkpoint in the north western city of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second largest city.

Berendique was being driven to a birthday party five blocks from home by her older brother when police at a checkpoint pointed guns at the car, her father, Fernando Berendique, said. When his son panicked, police shot at the car six times, he said. His son wasn’t injured, he said.

As crime surges, diplomats in Venezuela have become targets.

Chile’s consul in Caracas, Juan Carlos Fernandez, was shot during a kidnapping in the Venezuelan capital in November, Chile’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Nov. 15.

He was held for two hours and beaten by his captors before being released, according to the statement. Mexico’s ambassador to Venezuela, Carlos Pujalte, was released after being kidnapped in Caracas in January.