03.01.15: Missionaries

Speaking at an event commemorating the 26 anniversary of El Caracazo yesterday, Maduro said that Venezuelan authorities had detained an unspecified number of American citizens, including a pilot.

While Maduro did not provide any details about the cases, four American missionaries were released yesterday after having been detained and questioned earlier this week. The missionaries, originally from North Dakota, were arrested on Wednesday for unknown reasons, and that they were released yesterday. The missionaries have already left the country, and have been banned from returning for two years by the Venezuelan government.

The pastor of the church to which the missionaries belong, Bruce Dick, gave few details about the ordeal, although he did explain that the missionaries – three men and one women – were not treated poorly by their captors:

They weren’t afraid for their lives or anything. It was just question after question…

Maduro Places Sanctions on U.S.

At the same event in Caracas, Maduro made a surprise announcement and placed a number of sanctions and regulations designed to halt U.S. “interference” in Venezuela.

The new regulations/sanctions are:

• The number of U.S. diplomatic staff in the country will be reduced to an unspecified number.
• U.S. diplomatic staff must notify the Venezuelan government of every meeting they plan on having. Maduro heavily insinuated that the diplomatic staff were holding “conspiratorial meetings”.
• All U.S. citizens wishing to visit Venezuela now require a visa. The visa will cost the same amount in U.S. dollars as a visa into the United States for Venezuelan citizens.
• Several U.S. politicians “who have bombed countries like Iraq” are now banned from entering Venezuela.

Foreign Affairs Minister Delcy Rodriguez said that the U.S. government had been made aware of the measures. However, a high-ranking U.S. government official said today that his government had not received any kind of official notification from the Venezuelan government, and declined to make any further comments.

During an interview for TeleSur, Rodriguez explained that the sanctions came about as a response to an alleged coup attempt Maduro claims was orchestrated by the United States:

Recently, the President revealed a coup plan, the objective of which was to assassinate the President. Many officers [implicated in the coup, although the context is not totally clear] have said that they had support from the United States embassy.

Despite ad nauseam claims that the United States government was behind a coup attempt against Venezuela, the government has yet to provide one single piece of credible evidence to prove this assertion.