When the president of Venezuela gets up on national TV to denounce a gun crime, you know it’s not just any old gun crime. And sure enough, the recent assault on the son of one of his colleagues turns out to be not just any assault, but an assassination attempt aimed at his popular, prominent father…and one more sordid episode in the opposition’s quest for the destabilization of Venezuela. Story via Aporrea:
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro Moros denounced that the July 28 attack against Mauricio Bernal, son of former revolutionary deputy Freddy Bernal, must have been planned in Colombia.
“The right is capable of reaching even that far. All investigations point to intellectual authorship in Colombia. The two assassins were trained by paramilitary bands in Colombia,” said the Venezuelan head of state during the 62nd edition of his program, “Contact With Maduro”, broadcast from the Junín Theatre in Caracas.
Maduro recounted that the young man was attacked by a pair on a motorcycle in front of his house in the El Paraíso sector of the Libertador municipality of the Capital District. They shot him in the chest without saying a word; before he fell, he gunned the two down. Afterwards, he received emergency medical treatment.
The president indicated that the authorities already have all the proofs which point to those responsible for the crime, and they will soon be shown to the people of Venezuela.
“We’re not just confronting a handful of deputies who have gone mad and disobeyed the Constitution. It’s a plan to assault Venezuela and see if the people give up,” Maduro warned.
Freddy Bernal recently warned of the coincidence of attacks on his own political team and the recent attack on his family, which leads one to presume that the real object [of the attacks] is his own person, as a revolutionary director.
“This type of actions against my political team or my family will not divert me from the peaceful course of the Bolivarian Revolution,” Bernal said.
Translation mine. Here’s Freddy Bernal himself, on the public channel VTV, the day after it happened, talking about the assault (which his son, happily, survived):
Mauricio Bernal, luckily, is a skilled shooter with good firearms training. And the shots hit him in the sternum, rather than the heart. This could have ended a lot worse, especially if there had been more assailants.
Recall that the assassination of Robert Serra was also carried out by Colombian-led and -trained paramilitary bands. And remember, above all, who’s behind them.
I don’t think this will be the last time we hear of an attempt on the life of a prominent Bolivarian (or a member of their family), unfortunately. These bastards are persistent, and there’s been more than one group active lately. But Freddy Bernal himself survived an attempt on his own life and that of his president. You can see him here:
Freddy appears, along with Iris Varela and several other prominent Chavistas, in the scene where the opposition putschists are threatening to bomb Miraflores Palace…with everyone in it. And as you can see, they were not about to leave under even such dire circumstances. The final outcome…well, you can see it for yourself.