‘Free Our President’, Maduro Supporters Demand At Rally

Around 2,000 supporters of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro demonstrated Sunday in Caracas to demand that he and his wife, who were nabbed by US forces and taken to a New York jail, be released.

A group of pro-Maduro paramilitaries and bikers accompanied the demonstrators, who waved red, blue and yellow Venezuelan flags.

“Free our president,” read a placard held by a man with a red flannel shirt which bore the image of Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.

“Venezuela is no-one’s colony,” another placard read, a swipe at US President Donald Trump’s announcement Saturday that Washington would “run” Venezuela during an unspecified transitional period.

On Monday, Maduro is due in court in New York to face charges of “narcoterrorism” tied to alleged cocaine trafficking into the United States.

“The narcotrafficker and terrorist is Trump,” Nairda Itriago, 56, told AFP angrily, accusing US forces, who carried out airstrikes to neuter Venezuela’s defenses while Maduro was being captured, of killing “innocent people.”

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Venezuelan hospitals have refused to divulge the number of people killed or injured in the pre-dawn strikes.

Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said a “large part” of Maduro’s security team was killed “in cold blood,” as well as military personnel and civilians, but gave no figures.

A doctors’ group told AFP that around 70 people were killed and 90 were injured.

The demonstrators in Caracas echoed speculation that Maduro had been betrayed by a member of his inner circle, smoothing the path for US special forces to swoop in and capture him at the country’s biggest military base.

“How is it possible…that the air defences didn’t work?” a 69-year-old accountant who gave his name as Papa Juancho said.

“Nicolas Maduro was removed by traitors, because with the amount of security he had, this should never have happened,” he said.

Maduro’s son, Nicolas Maduro Guerra, also voiced suspicion about the presence of spies in his father’s entourage in an audio message shared on social media on Sunday.

“History will tell who the traitors were,” he said.