The Venezuelan government said on Monday that it had thwarted a plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro by arresting nine Colombian right-wing paramilitaries who entered the country with the intention of carrying out the planned assassination.
Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres told a news conference in Caracas that security forces arrested the nine Colombian nationals in the country's northwest on Sunday before they could enter the capital with heavy weapons to carry out the plot.
Torres said the detainees were members of two right-wing Colombian paramilitary groups, adding that Venezuelan intelligence officials were tracking a third Colombian group suspected of involvement in the same plot.
"This may be part of a plan that was orchestrated from Colombia to kill President Maduro and de-stabilize the Venezuelan government," Torres was quoted as saying at the press conference by the local media.
Maduro was sworn in as Venezuelan President on April 19 after he defeated opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski in the tightly contested April election, necessitated by the death of President Hugo Chavez following his long battle with cancer. The opposition has filed a lawsuit with the country's Supreme Court, challenging Maduro's narrow 1.5 percent victory in the polls.
Although ties between Venezuela and Colombia were strained when Alvaro Uribe was Colombia's President, they improved considerably after Juan Manuel Santos became President in August 2010. Nevertheless, bilateral relations hit a new low after Santos hosted Capriles at the presidential palace last month.
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