Chávez appoints Saddam supporter
Venezuelan now in charge of nation's passport agency
December 1, 2003
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez,a longtime friend of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, is being criticized for appointing two radical ideologues to the top positions in the Latin American nation's immigration department – one of whom is, according to a Spanish-language periodical, a supporter of Saddam Hussein.
Hugo Cabezas and Tareck el Aissami were appointed last month as director and deputy director of the Identification and Immigration Directorate, in charge of border controls and issuing passports and national ID cards. The agency also works with electoral authorities on voter registration.
According to the Miami Herald, both appointees were student leaders at the University of the Andes in the western city of Merida, described by senior school officials as a virtual haven for armed Chávez supporters and leftist guerrillas.
When El Aissami served as president of the student body from 2001 to 2003, his armed supporters controlled the university's dormitories, said Oswando Alcala, a professor and director of student affairs.
Their appointments to the passport office raised eyebrows both because of the reports of Arabs obtaining Venezuelan ID documents and the possibility of fraud in an ongoing drive for a referendum to recall Chávez. His popularity stands at less than 40 percent.
Allegations that Chávez's leftist government issued ID documents to Islamic radicals surfaced most recently in the newsweekly U.S. News and World Report. ''Venezuela is providing support – including identity documents – that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups,'' the magazine reported last month, quoting senior U.S. military and intelligence officials.
Chávez was the only head of state to visit Hussein in recent years – in 2000. He bitterly opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and tried to have a postwar Iraqi delegation banned from OPEC meetings. Cabezas, 30, and El Aissami, 28, both lawyers, are strong Chávez supporters. Cabezas is now the fourth-highest-ranking official in Chávez's Fifth Republic Movement, serving as secretary general of its National Tactical Command.
El Aissami, talking to reporters in Merida on March 27 before he traveled to Caracas to see Baghdad's ambassador to Venezuela, denounced the U.S. invasion of Iraq "because today a noble, unarmed and peaceful people is being attacked.''
Born in Venezuela of Syrian parents, El Aissami is the son of the president of the Venezuelan branch of Hussein's once-ruling Baath Party, and nephew of Shibli Al Aissami, a top-ranking Baath Party official in Baghdad whose whereabouts are unknown.
Tareck El Aissami's father, Carlos, defended him in an interview with the Herald as an outstanding student and said he was not a member of the Baath Party.
In an article the father wrote after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and showed to the Herald, he called President Bush ''genocidal, mentally deranged, a liar and a racist,'' and al Qaida's leader "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden.''
Venezuela, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, refused to recognize Iraq's delegation to an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting July 31.
Venezuela is the world's No. 5 oil producer.
Venezuelan military defectors say the radical Chavez not only gets his political inspiration from Castro, he has developed ties with terrorist groups throughout the world, including al-Qaida, and was at least cordial in relations with Saddam Hussein before his government was overthrown.
As Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez's pilot, told WorldNetDaily, "the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours' flight from the United States."
Diaz has tried to warn U.S. officials of Chavez's direct involvement with international terrorism and his formation of a bloc of Latin American countries opposed to the United States.
"My objective here in the U.S. is to show who Chavez really is and the danger he represents for the whole Western Hemisphere and especially in Venezuela."
Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He is one of more than 100 military officers who have quit the Chavez regime as the president tries to hang on to power amid a month-long general strike that has cut off oil exports, his primary source of income.
In addition to his purported al-Qaida links, Chavez has been warmly received in travels to Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Libya.
Now there are rumors in Caracas that U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro may soon be declared persona non grata.
Sources close to the top say Chavez believes the ambassador's increasing involvement in national affairs is aimed personally against him. Some officials reacted with a sigh of relief as ambassador Shapiro left on a two-week vacation.
"It is a breath of fresh air," said one official reacting to Shapiro's departure. The ambassador, who had just attended a meeting with Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, talked to journalists on his way out of the meeting and said: "The U.S. and Venezuela have a memorable relationship," reflecting on the long lasting cooperation between the two countries.
But the ambassador could not refrain from dealing with the immediate problem of the troubled country and told the media the most important thing on the agenda is "naming a new board of the national electoral college as a beginning of fulfilling a 29th of May accord signed between the government and the opposition." Local media were quick to say that Ambassador Shapiro's remarks echoed the views of many who believe only a new electoral college can pave the road to a possible referendum which could end the regime of Chavez.
The relationships between Washington and Caracas deteriorated following the 1998 landslide election victory of Chavez, a revolutionary paratrooper who in 1992 led an unsuccessful coup against the democratically elected President Carlos Andreas Perez. At that time the colonel led the Revolutionary Simon Bolivar Movement, a clandestine group of left-wing officers. Observers say it is ironic the former rebel officer, who led hundreds of soldiers to the capital in a bloody coup which resulted in the deaths of 120 people, is now accusing others for plotting against his regime. The coup was quelled by soldiers loyal to the government and Chavez ended up in jail where he stayed for two years. The president, once a coup leader, is now warning his supporters, known as "The Red Berets," of a coup against his regime.
The colonel gradually became a popular figure, the hero of the left, and the champion of the poor and the underprivileged. Those groups backed him in his election campaign during which he preached for social and economic reform. His clandestine group was renamed to The Movement of the Fifth Republic. Chavez took over from President Andreas Perez, sentenced for embezzlement and corruption. Perez is now hiding in the Dominican Republic.
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