Sunday, August 29, 2010

Bolivia Says CIA Knew of Terrorist Plot to Attack Cuban and Venezuelan Humanitarian Brigades

Bolivia: CIA knew of terrorist plot to attack Cuban and Venezuelan humanitarian brigades

Jean-Guy Allard
Courtesy of Granma International

ISTVAN Belovai, the CIA agent who directed the conspiracy led by paramilitary Eduardo Rosza to assassinate President Evo Morales in April 2009, was also informed of the mercenary’s plans to attack humanitarian brigades of Cuban and Venezuelan doctors and engineers involved in community services in the poorest municipalities of eastern Bolivia.

This is confirmed by emails between Rosza and Belkovai which have been meticulously studied by the Cochabamba Bolivian Data and Analysis investigation center, headed by the well-known anthropologist and communicator Wilson García Mérida.

"Rosza suggested to Belovai that he could attack precise targets where both brigades were working and which were already being planned between them via these emails," the investigator explained.

"There was talk of blowing up the one kilometer-plus Pailón bridge – Bolivia’s largest, inaugurated by Evo Morales in the sugar region of Santa Cruz – as well as points precisely defined on Google maps where brigades of Venezuelan military engineers from the binational commandos were involved in community works in the poorest rural municipalities of the Amazonian eastern region, together with Cuban medical brigades located in the same areas."

Istvan Belovai, formerly a Hungarian intelligence officer, who was the link between Hungarian-Croat Eduardo Rosza Flores, chief of the paramilitary group in charge of the assassination attempt, and the CIA, died on November 6, 2009 in Denver, United States, where he had lived since a hasty exit from his country in 1990.

The circumstances of the death of Belovai, who directed the conspirators, remain something a mystery.

In the mid-80s, then Lieutenant-Colonel Istvan Belovai (agent "Scorpion-B") of the Hungarian military intelligence services, made the headlines for having leaked to the CIA the names of U.S. officers passing on information to Hungarian intelligence. In the 90s, Belovai emigrated to the United States and joined the CIA.

Belovai’s death occurred precisely when the contents of one of Rosza Flores’ laptops was being minutely examined in Bolivia. In one file called Bel-Norte, the Bolivian experts found a number of emails between Rosza Flores and agent Belovai.

CUBAN-AMERICAN VALLADRES BEHIND ACHA

That correspondence between the terrorist and the spy of Hungarian origin made reference to Hugo Achá Melgar, representative in Bolivia of the Human Rights Foundation, and currently a fugitive in the United States after having been exposed by the Bolivian police as one of the principal financiers of the terrorist war to be mounted in Bolivia.

At that time, Achá Melgar was in constant contact with the Cuban-American terrorist Armando Valladares, the man who directed the activities of this CIA-front foundation from New York.

"The relation between Hugo Achá Melgar and Valladares is a direct one, given that this lawyer publicly boasted about it – he was co-host of a very popular television program in Santa Cruz, on which he used to refer to Valladares as his ‘dear personal friend.’ In fact, the direct link between Achá Melgar and Valladares led to the arrival of ‘international observers’ (anti-government agents) in Santa Cruz during the January 2009 referendum and apparently Belovai was among those so-called observers," Wilson García Mérida explained.

Valladares, a terrorist of Cuban origin arrested in Havana with Carlos Alberto Montaner in December 1960 while leading attacks on stores and movie theaters in the capital on the CIA’s account, managed his subversive organization from New York’s Empire State Building itself, without the least interference from the FBI. Shortly after the Santa Cruz events, Valladares resigned from the presidency of that front organization well known for its campaigns of interference in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Between October and November 2008, when the abovementioned correspondence took place, Rosza Flores "had begun to distance himself from his separatist godfathers of the Santa Cruz oligarchy, because they refused to give him the huge financial resources that he was demanding to buy weapons of mass destruction such as missiles and tanks," and sought direct contact with the CIA and financial backing via Belovai and Valladares.

The targets of the conspiracy dismantled on April 16, 2009 in the Las Américas Hotel in Santa Cruz were President Evo Morales, Vice President Alvaro García Linera and Government Minister Juan Ramón Quintana.

ALL OF THEM SOUGHT REFUGE IN THE UNITED STATES

One of the capos of the Supreme Council that directed the conspiracy to assassinate Evo Morales was an influential Santa Cruz businessman, Branko Marinkovic, of Croatian origin.

Marinkovic fled Bolivia after being exposed by the Attorney General’s Office and found refuge in U.S. territory.

After the commando was dismantled, Alejandro Melgar Pereira, the director of the Santa Cruz Arbitration and Conciliation Center, and an accomplice in the conspiracy, immediately fled Bolivia for the United States.

It was also confirmed that Rosza Flores was in contact with UnoAmerica, a Latin American fascist organization headed by Alejandro Peña Esclusa, who subsequently turned up on the side of the Honduran coup leaders.

Peña Esclusa has many links with the Miami Cuban-American mafia and two anti-Chávez groups are affiliated to his organization in that city.

Peña Esclusa was arrested last July 5 by officers of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), after a raid on his house in Caracas, in which one kilogram of C4 explosive and 100 detonators were seized.

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