Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Monday called on the Argentine government for the retention of a Venezuelan plane and its crew at the request of the United States, and requested their immediate release.
“They have kidnapped 11, 12 Venezuelan brothers because the Yankees order it from Washington and they wash their hands saying that it is a matter of justice,” said Ortega, an ally of Venezuela, during an act for the 42nd anniversary of the naval force.
“Whoever occupies the presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which is Argentina, is betraying the principles of CELAC, becoming an instrument of the Yankee empire,” Ortega added at a ceremony also attended by the Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy of Argentina, whom the president identified as Jorge Stevens.
Ortega, a former guerrilla in power since 2007, called on the government of the socialist Alberto Fernández to release “the Venezuelan brothers who have them imprisoned in Argentina, as if Argentina were a district of Miami,” and to return “the plane to its true owners.
«The president of CELAC (…) is playing a more shameful, sadder, more degrading role than the one he plays [Luis] Almagro [secretario general de la Organización de Estados Americanos]which is openly an instrument of the gringos”, he considered.
The Boeing 747 cargo Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state airline Conviasasanctioned by Washington, was detained in June after landing at the Ezeiza airport, coming from Mexico, with a crew of Venezuelans and Iranians and a load of auto parts.
On August 2, the United States asked Argentina to seize the plane after a court order that considered that US “export laws” were violated when Emtrasur bought the aircraft from Mahan Air, an airline affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the House Blanca considers a terrorist organization. The request was accepted by the justice last week.
Last week, Nicolás Maduro also questioned Argentina about the retention of the plane.
The Fernández government, who at one point criticized Washington’s exclusion of Managua from the Summit of the Americas, supported a resolution last week at the OAS that condemned in Nicaragua “the forced closure of non-governmental organizations, as well as the harassment and arbitrary restrictions of religious organizations and voices critical of the government”.
Humanitarian organizations count some 190 imprisoned opponents in Nicaragua, whom Ortega accuses of wanting to overthrow him with the support of Washington. Meanwhile, a Catholic bishop critical of the government has been held by the police at his residence for more than ten days.