Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe Velez had planned to hire mercenaries to assassinate him.
The failed assassination of Maduro took place in early August 2018 during a military parade in the Venezuelan capital. The president was left unharmed while seven security officers were injured in the incident. Back then, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry also mentioned former Venezuelan Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Diaz, Colombia’s former President, Juan Manuel Santos, and one of the Venezuelan opposition leaders, Julio Borges, among those behind the attempt to assassinate Maduro, alongside Uribe.
“I have learned about a plan coordinated by Alvaro Uribe Velez involving Colombian Ambassador to the United States Francisco Santo … to send 32 mercenaries to Venezuela to try to kill me,” Maduro said in a speech, aired live on his Twitter late on Wednesday.
Maduro has repeatedly claimed that the United States instructed Colombia to organize his assassination, something denied by both Bogota and Washington.
