The general in command of Venezuela’s presidential honour guard, Javier Marcano Tábata, has been sacked days after Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was seized by US forces in a raid in Caracas and taken to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges.
The presidential honour guard is the military force which provides the bodyguards tasked with protecting the head of state.
While the Venezuelan government has not yet provided a detailed breakdown of casualties, members of the guard are thought to be among the dozens of people killed in the US operation to seize Maduro.
The order to replace Gen Marcano Tábata was issued by the new interim president, Delcy Rodríguez.
Rodríguez was sworn in by the National Assembly, which is dominated by government loyalists, on Monday.
She served as Maduro’s vice-president and is considered to be a close ally of the jailed leader.
US President Donald Trump said in the news conference following Maduro’s seizure that the US would “run” Venezuela and that it was talking to Rodríguez.
He also threatened that Rodríguez would face a “fate worse than Maduro’s” if she did not comply with US demands, including those for oil, of which Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves.
On Tuesday, the US president said that Venezuela would be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of oil to the US, but Venezuela’s interim government has yet to comment on that statement.
Rodríguez’s tone has been alternating between defiant and conciliatory since she was designated interim president by Venezuela’s Supreme Court.
She denounced the seizure of Maduro as an “illegal kidnapping” but has also said that her government had “invited the US government to work together on an agenda of co-operation”.
Her actions are being watched closely both inside and outside of Venezuela to gauge what course she may steer now that she is in charge of the country and for signs of any potential rifts in her government.
The sacking of Gen Marcano Tábata is one of the first changes to senior officials in her inner circle.
As well as being in charge of the presidential guard, Gen Marcano Tábata also led Venezuela’s military counterintelligence unit DGCIM.
The DGCIM has played a key role in the repression of people critical of the Maduro government, according to the United Nations.
A UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission found that the counter-intelligence unit had committed myriad human rights violations since 2013.
It documented scores of cases in which those detained were subjected to “torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” in the DGCIM headquarters and a network of covert detention centres across the country
However, his sacking does not appear to be related to the repression carried out by the DGCIM under his helm, as the man she has appointed to succeed him headed an intelligence service which faces similar accusations.
Gustavo González López was in charge of Venezuela’s national intelligence service, Sebin, for many years.
The Sebin controls the notorious Helicoide prison in Caracas, where the UN documented abuses being carried out against “opposition politicians, journalists, protesters, and human rights defenders”.
Source: BBC