Monday, November 17, 2008

Danilo Anderson assassination plot thickens: allegation leveled against top officials

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan):
The long-running saga that started with the assassination of State Prosecutor Danilo Anderson very nearly four years ago took another strange twist when it was claimed that senior government officials and police officers at first planned to "eliminate" the killers.

The claim came from Hernando Contreras, a former prosecutor who was on the team that investigated Anderson's death when his car was blown up as he drove through a Caracas suburb on the evening of Nov. 18, 2004.

Contreras said that a meeting the following day at the headquarters of the state security service, Disip, had been attended by the then-Interior and Justice Minister Jesse Chacon, and the heads of Disip and the scientific and investigative police, Cicip, among others. There, Contreras claimed, they discussed an anonymous telephone in which the supposed identity of the killers was supposedly disclosed. "They decided to eliminate all the people who appeared in the anonymous call," he said.

Two brothers and their cousin, all named Guevara, were convicted of the murder and are serving lengthy prison sentences. At the time of his death, Anderson was leading an investigation of 400 people linked to the crisis which briefly ousted President Chavez in April 2002.

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