Venezuelan
Foreign Minister
Illegally Detained at JFK Airport
And Strip-Searched
By Stephen Lendman
24 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
VHeadline.com
broke the news early Saturday evening that Venezuelan Foreign Minister
Nicolas Madura was prevented by airport officials from departing the
US from JFK airport on a commercial flight on Saturday following the
UN General Assembly meeting. He said officials demanded he surrender
his ticket and boarding pass claiming his name was on a so-called "red
list." He was then illegally detained, taken to a small room and
strip-searched despite his strong protests after having clearly identified
who he was. He explained once he did, his treatment only got worse.
This was a clear Bush administration
attempt at harassment and deliberate Gestapo-like thuggery as well as
a gross violation of international protocol. It was also an irrational
act of retaliatory muscle-flexing by an administration losing control
and reacting like a schoolyard hoodlum in response to President Hugo
Chavez having had the courage to denounce George Bush's corrupted neoliberal
policies on a world stage at the UN and to publicly call the US president
the devil everyone knows he is. The Foreign Minister told Venezuelan
reporters police officers threatened to handcuff and beat him physically
if he resisted. They then held him in detention for 90 minutes before
he was released denying him at any time any outside contact or legal
help.
The reason given by airport
officials for his detention was the allegation that he was involved
in an aborted coup in Venezuela - 14 years ago in 1992 in which Hugo
Chavez as an army officer was involved. It was directed against then
President Carlos Andres Perez who happened to be a personal friend of
GHW Bush. Perez at the time was extremely unpopular. During his 1988
winning presidential campaign, he promised vitally needed reforms for
his people. Then after taking office in 1989 he adopted the same destructive
neoliberal policies as before in violation of everything he said he
would do. In 1993 Perez was impeached and jailed on multi-million dollar
corruption charges but later was given asylum in the US where he now
lives in a luxurious Manhattan apartment in New York city. This kind
of treatment is a common practice by many US administrations as a show
of gratitude to former deposed friendly dictators and former criminals
in their employ or in service to their interests. They're allowed to
come t the US to enjoy a permanent home in luxury out of the reach of
authorities at home that wish to prosecute them for their crimes.
The situation with Minister
Maduro is now resolved as inadequate as it is to say that. The Venezuelan
government, of course, demands a full apology for this inexcusable act
of abuse and effrontery. So far the only statement of apology has come
from a low-level US State Department spokesperson, and it was a mealy-mouthed
one that may have been intended to continue the insult against the Minister,
his government, and, of course, Hugo Chavez above all others.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.