2024-12-17 12:15:00
photo caption, Argentina’s Minister of Public Security has called on Venezuela to release the Argentine police officer.
- Author, Write
- Author’s title, BBC News World
21 minutes
Relations between Buenos Aires and Caracas continue to deteriorate.
The confirmation of the arrest on Venezuelan territory of the Argentine gendarme Nahuel Agustín Gallo is the latest episode in a saga that began with the arrival of Javier Milei at the Casa Rosada a year ago.
However, the accusations of the Venezuelan Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, according to which the agent was part of a plot against the government of Nicolás Maduro appear to have exhausted the patience of the Argentine authorities, who described the incident as a “kidnapping”.
“Release Nahuel Gallo or face the consequences,” warned Argentine Public Security Minister Patricia Bullrich.
“You are the lackey of a criminal and cowardly dictatorship. The kidnapping of an Argentine gendarme doesn’t make you strong, it shows you desperate,” added Bullrich, whom Cabello had called a “fascist.”
Is the tourist a conspirator?
Gallo was arrested by Venezuelan police on December 8, while trying to enter Venezuela overland from Colombia.
The officer went to meet his wifeAlejandra Gómez, Venezuelan, and their daughter, who have been residing in the Caribbean country for several months.
However, this version was questioned by Cabello.
photo caption, Cabello claimed that Gallo was part of a conspiracy against the Maduro government.
“A person has been arrested. Go to his Instagram, he travels all over the world, but his salary is 500 dollars. What did he come to Venezuela to do? What was his task? They don’t say,” said the Venezuelan minister.
“Everyone puts up a facade. “He had his girlfriend.” Everyone makes this excuse (…) Whoever comes to conspire must assume his responsibilities”, insisted the official in a press conference.
From Argentina they denied the accusations. So Bullrich showed on his X account (formerly Twitter) some documents which would prove that Gallo had only made eight trips abroad.
The Argentine Foreign Minister, Gerardo Werthein, expressed himself in similar terms, stating in statements to the press: “His (Cabello’s) entire story does not correspond to reality. The gendarme has a two-year-old Argentine daughter and his daughter wife went to help her mother in Venezuela He went to visit them and they detained him arbitrarily, and They accuse him of carrying out missions“.
Image source, BEE
photo caption, The police harassment of the Argentine embassy in Caracas is another source of tension between the two governments.
So far, the Venezuelan authorities have not disclosed Gallo’s whereabouts, while his wife has called for his release.
“We are working people. All of us who know Nahuel know what kind of person he is. We know he is a good guy, a family man, a good son, a great father and husband,” he said, denying he was part of any conspiracy.
Gallo’s case adds to that impasse that Argentina maintains with Venezuela due to the siege of the embassy in Caracas, where six opposition leaders have been refugees for nine months.
In recent months the diplomatic headquarters, which has presided over Brazil since Maduro’s government broke off relations with Milei’s, has seen it cut off without electricity and running water, while police officers surrounded and monitored it.
“This violates the Vienna Convention and the Convention on Diplomatic Asylum. We cannot allow the inviolability of diplomatic missions to be compromised. It is psychological terror,” Werthein denounced before the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS).
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