Chavez opponent detained by authorities in Venezuela, suspected of links to alleged bomber

Chavez opponent detained in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan intelligence agents have detained a government opponent on suspicion of links to a Salvadoran man accused of bombings in Cuba.

Alejandro Pena Esclusa was detained at his apartment Monday night by agents acting on a court order, and they found what appear to be explosives and more than 100 detonators, said David Colmenares, counterintelligence director of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service.

Agents raided Pena’s home based on information provided by the Salvadoran, Francisco Chavez Abarca, who was captured and handed over to Cuba last week to face trial for a series of bombings in 1997, Colmenares said in comments broadcast by TV channel Globovision.

Pena’s wife, Indira de Pena, called her husband’s detention a sham.

“These people dared to plant those explosives in a very crude way because they put some explosives in the drawer of our 8-year-old girl’s desk,” she said in an interview with the Colombian radio program “La Hora de la Verdad.” She accused authorities of planting the explosives while her husband was handcuffed and she was in another part of the apartment.

Pena’s lawyer, Alfredo Romero, told reporters he was not allowed to enter the apartment during the raid.

Pena heads the small Fuerza Solidaria group opposed to President Hugo Chavez. He was detained in 2002 on suspicion of links to military officers who took part in a failed coup attempt that year, but was later released.

Authorities may soon carry out more raids based on information that Chavez Abarca gave to authorities, Colmenares said, according to the state-run Venezuelan News Agency.

Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami has said Chavez Abarca acknowledged plotting to violently disrupt congressional elections scheduled for September and had contacted what El Aissami described as some “fascist sectors of the Venezuelan opposition.”

Critics of the president accuse his government of using criminal prosecutions to intimidate opponents and try to silence dissent — a charge that Chavez denies.

In a video posted on his group’s website Monday, Pena said he feared the government could try to jail him and was trying to link him to Chavez Abarca. He also said: “I don’t believe in violence. I believe in opinion.”