Venezuelan Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello announced on Saturday that the socialist regime arrested three U.S. citizens for their alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
As is customary for the Venezuelan regime, Cabello accused the CIA of being behind the alleged plot, offering no evidence to back up the claim. He further accused Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) of being “neck-deep” in the purported CIA plan.
Cabello — a socialist strongman whom Maduro recently appointed to lead his authoritarian regime’s brutal repressive apparatus and whom U.S. authorities actively want on multiple narcoterrorism charges — stated in a press conference on Sunday that the three American citizens were apprehended in the southern Venezuelan city of Puerto Ayacucho, Amazonas. He identified them as Estrella David, Aaron Darren Logan, and U.S. Navy Seal member Wilmer José Castañeda.
The three U.S. citizens, Cabello claimed, are part of a larger group of 14 arrested individuals involved in the purported plot against Maduro. Cabello also accused Castañeda of being a member of a “mercenary group.”
“Castañeda is the head of the operation put in place by the CIA and that is why the White House felt almost as if it had been hit by the capture of this citizen,” Cabello claimed. “The CIA is in charge of this operation.
“And the other, which does not surprise us either, is the National Intelligence Center of Spain,” he continued. “These two captured, they even speak of a group of mercenaries that they are looking for to bring them to Venezuela, with different objectives.”
According to Cabello, in addition to Maduro, the plot also allegedly sought to target Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and himself. The plot, according to Cabello, also called for an “attack” on the Argentine Embassy in Caracas, computer attacks against government systems, and “terrorist attacks” against Venezuela’s water, power, and transportation infrastructure. Venezuela’s infrastructure is presently in a rundown state as a result of more than two decades of socialist mismanagement.
“Imagine a bomb, an explosive. What the Argentine Embassy was going to do, who would they point the finger at in the world? Venezuela,” Cabello said.
For the past several months, the Argentine embassy has housed six Venezuelan dissidents whom Maduro also accused of trying to kill him in 2024. Maduro cut diplomatic ties with Argentina and six other countries in late July after the nation questioned the July 28 sham election, which Maduro fraudulently insists he “won.”
In accordance with international law, Brazil took custody of the Argentine embassy and the dissidents through September, when the Maduro regime abruptly revoked the permission. While the six dissidents remain inside the Argentine embassy, the diplomatic situation remains unresolved at press time.
Cabello also claimed, providing no evidence, that contact information for members of Vente Venezuela, a center-right party led by opposition member María Corina Machado, was allegedly found on the detainees’ phones.
The socialist strongman presented a stockpile of 400 firearms police allegedly seized that Cabello claimed were smuggled into the country to be used in “conspiratorial acts” against the ruling socialist regime.
“This impressive amount of weaponry is just a sample of what has been seized, of what has been captured, of what has been recovered in intelligence operations in our country,” Cabello said. “We have a group of people arrested who are part of this network.”
Cabello claimed that the allegedly seized firearms originated in the United States and further asserted that they arrived in Venezuela in containers with products such as dog food.
In addition to the three U.S. citizens, Cabello announced, two Spanish citizens — identified as José María Basoa Valdovinos and Andrés Martínez Adasme — and a Czech national — identified as Jan Darmovrzal — were arrested. Cabello accused the two Spanish nationals of being members of Spain’s CNI.
The Spanish government denied that the two nationals were intelligence officials. Martínez Adasme’s father told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that his son was on vacation in Venezuela. Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariana Wernerova announced on Monday that the Czech government requested explanations for the arrest of Darmovrzal in an official diplomatic note.
U.S. Department of State officials confirmed the arrest of “one member of the U.S. military” and said it was aware of unconfirmed reports regarding the other U.S. citizens to the Spanish EFE news agency on Saturday, describing the Maduro regime’s plot accusations as “categorically false.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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