‘No One is Going to Support’ People Like Venezuelan Helicopter Pilot – Analyst

Sputnik: What do you make of the social media posts by Oscar Perez saying he was trying to hand himself over to the police?

Francisco Dominquez: The footage that Oscar Perez himself put out, it’s totally clear he was surrounded by the security forces and the story that he was going to hand himself over might be possible. However, he is not in control of everyone else who has weapons in his terrorist group. The information from the government is that as there was an agreement for the security forces to approach the house where they were hiding in order to take them over and arrest them, then a couple of bombs were thrown over into the security forces and bullets were fired at them and you can see this in the footage. 

Sputnik: His attack last year came after months of unrest, there still a lot of hostility between the opposition and the government, could we expect more arrests?

Francisco Dominquez: The opposition, politically and electorally, is on the floor. The economy is suffering enormously because of the economic war against the government, against the people of Venezuela, but the opposition has lost three elections massively in a row, now they are even discussing the possibility of not even fielding candidates for the upcoming presidential election that is going to take place this year. In this context it makes it extremely difficult for the opposition to actually organise anything because clearly they feel trapped by the united states or sections of the US establishment are trying to sabotage this  and as you can see as they are isolated politically and nobody will support what they are trying to do such as fly a helicopter into the supreme court building trying to kill people that were at a ceremony, 80 of them on the terrace of the building at the time when he actually launched the attack, no one is going to support than any longer. 

Sputnik: Oscar Perez was declared a terrorist by the Venezuelan government but seen an anti-government symbol by opposition. Do you think he has ties to the US and could they be behind his group?

Francisco Dominquez: Well there was recently a guy who tried to occupy a military barracks in the interior of the country and the terrorist attack lasted about 24 hours, the guy was arrested immediately. He was actually living in Miami at the time just before he came to Venezuela to carry out the attack. The connection with Miami is clear; you need serious logistics from the point of view of travelling all the way to the country from Miami to have all the paraphernalia, weapons, long weapons, to have the intelligence to be able to get around and take the military barracks by surprise like he did for a little while. This needs serious logistical support. I cannot imagine that this is possible without serious support from outside and always the suspect is the United States.