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Venezuela president blames US for plotting his 2018 drone assassination bid

Sunday, 06 August 2023 10:27 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 07 August 2023 4:48 AM ]

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (File photo via RT by Getty Images)

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has again reiterated that the United States was directly involved in the 2018 drone assassination plot against him, further blaming the US-backed Colombian president at the time for being a co-conspirator.

Speaking on Friday at a ceremony to mark the 86th anniversary of the establishment of the Venezuelan National Guard, which fell on the same day as the failed assassination attempt in 2018, Maduro said both the United States and Colombia were involved in the attack.

Maduro pointed out that his former US counterpart, Donald Trump, spearheaded the plot to assassinate him as the order came directly from the White House.

He said subsequent investigations revealed Colombia’s then-president, Juan Manuel Santos, was Trump’s accomplice.

Santos was “the direct operator from Bogota” who had financed and planned the assassination just days before he was set to leave office, Maduro said, adding that the failed assassination attempt had been carried out by a “terrorist group” organized in Colombia.

Washington and Bogota have denied any role in the attack. The US national security advisor at the time, John Bolton, even claimed the attack was “a pretext set up by the regime itself.”

This screenshot of video footage shows bodyguards protecting Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro after the explosion of two drones during a ceremony on August 4, 2018.

On August 4, 2018, two assassination drones loaded with explosives detonated over the stage where Maduro was delivering an outdoor speech in Caracas to members of the National Guard.

Maduro was unharmed in the incident; however, the blasts left a number of soldiers injured.

Footage of the incident captured the explosions, with Maduro’s bodyguards seen leaping to protect the president with ballistic shields before whisking him away.

Following 91 separate court hearings which lasted until August 2022, the seventeen suspects linked to the incident were handed sentences ranging from five to 30 years in prison.

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