Venezuela’s interim leader has sacked the embattled general whose forces failed to protect the now-captured Nicolás Maduro from a US raid in Caracas.
Javier Marcano Tábata, who led Venezuela’s presidential honor guard, was fired Wednesday as part of interim-President Delcy Rodríguez’s first major shake-up of Maduro’s inner circle since his stunning capture last week.
The change came after President Trump warned Rodríguez that she could face a “fate worse than Maduro’s” if the former vice president failed to comply with US demands for civil order and oil.
Tábata appears to have taken the fall for Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3, when the dictator was seized by US special forces during an overnight raid on his Caracas military compound.
The Venezuelan government has yet to provide a detailed breakdown of the event, but reports indicate that at least 80 people were killed in the operation, including dozens of Cuban guards that Maduro relied on.
Venezuela’s military said that at least 23 members of its guard, including five generals, were killed in the US strikes, which Maduro’s government slammed as a humiliation.
Tábata’s dismissal closes the book on the Maduro loyalist who led Venezuela’s controversial military counterintelligence unit DGCIM.
The DGCIM is accused of playing a key role in Maduro’s suppression of his critics, with the United Nation’s Independent Fact-Finding Mission accusing the agency of a plethora of human rights violations since Maduro came to power in 2013.
The group allegedly subjected Maduro detractors to “torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” at their headquarters and detention centers across Venezuela, according to the UN.
Not much would change with Tábata’s ouster as Rodríguez has named Gustavo González López, a man who faces similar allegations, to succeed him.
López served as the head of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), which controls the notorious Helicoide prison in Caracas where torture was allegedly carried out against “politicians, journalists, protesters, and human rights defenders” who opposed Maduro’s rule.
