Drone attack: Venezuelan president vows to punish behind 'terrorists'

Following the Saturday attack in Venezue, president Nicolás Maduro has vowed to strike back at the “hired guns and terrorists” he claims were behind a bungled attempt to assassinate him, as authorities ordered the arrest of one prominent opposition lawmaker and seized another from his home.



Nicolás Maduro made remarks amid reports that his agents had seized an opposition leader from his home.

During a two-hour televised address from the Miraflores presidential palace, Maduro described how he had dodged death when rightwing conspirators sent two “murderous”, explosive-laden drones to kill him during a military parade in Caracas on Saturday afternoon.

“It was a truly miraculous day. We were saved by a miracle,” said Maduro, who was surrounded by his country’s military and political elite and a number of bandaged officials who he said had been injured in the attack.

“I looked Death in the face! I saw Death right before me and I said: ‘It’s not my time! Get out of here, Death! ... And that’s what gave me the strength and the courage to carry on staring Death in the face,”

Maduro said the “terrorist attack” was a turning point in a long-running conspiracy to overthrow the “Bolivarian revolution” whose leadership he inherited after Chávez’s death in 2013. “The central objective wasn’t just to kill a president but to kill a country, to kill hope, to kill the light of peace.”

Venezuela’s president, who was re-elected in May despite widespread domestic and international condemnation, vowed that those behind the botched attack would receive the “hardest and heaviest punishments” possible under his country’s law. Police and security services were already rounding up those culprits who had not already been caught: “We must … ensure that such a terrorist attack never repeats itself.”

In a second video, the politician’s father tells reporters: “We do not know where he is and we have the constitutional right to know his whereabouts.”

On Wednesday afternoon,
Venezuela’s supreme court announced it had ordered the arrest of Julio Borges, another lawmaker from the same party, on charges of “continuous public instigation”, treason and Maduro’s attempted murder.

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