-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The mystery assassin The shooting of three anti-Chavez demonstrators has unleased a wealth of conspiracy theories, says Duncan Campbell Duncan Campbell Tuesday December 17 2002 The Guardian One of the mysterious aspects of the current crisis in Venezuela is who was behind the fatal shootings of three demonstrators taking part in a rally against the president, Hugo Chavez, earlier this month. Both sides are blaming the other for organising the attack and competing conspiracy theories have turned it into a Venezuelan equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. A Portuguese-born taxi-driver, Joao De Gouveia, has already confessed to all three killings. On December 6, De Gouveia opened fire in Plaza Francia in Altamira, a centre for opposition protests. Josefina de Inciarte, 76, Keyla Guerra, a 17-year-old student and Professor Jaime Giraud, 53, were killed and are now seen as martyrs of the movement to remove Chavez. Thousands took part in marches in their memory last week. De Gouveia was grabbed by demonstrators at the square after his gun appeared to jam and only rescued from a lynching by the police who took him into custody. Owain Johnson, a Welsh freelance journalist based in Caracas, who was in the square at the time, told me: "I thought he was going to be lynched on the spot. One big guy said 'we can't put up with this any more, we've got to stand up for ourselves'." The face of the gunman, bloodied in the attack, has appeared daily in the press and on television since then, often with the question attached: "Who is Joao De Gouveia?" De Gouveia was born in Madeira 39 years ago this week and moved to Venezuela in 1980 where he found work as a taxi driver. According to the daily El Nacional, he lived a solitary life and had told neighbours recently that he was planning to go to the US. Just before the shooting the black haired De Gouveia had his hair dyed red. Initially, it was suggested that De Gouveia had mental problems and had been so angered by the anti-government coverage on private television stations that he decided to attack a television crew working for Globovision, the most anti-Chavez of the stations. The opposition suggest that De Gouveia was probably hired by the government or its supporters to intimidate the opposition. A tape has been shown repeatedly on the anti-government stations which purports to show De Gouveia the day before the killings at a pro-Chavez rally that was also attended by Freddy Bernal, a pro-Chavez mayor. The government, on the other hand, suggest that the opposition hired the gunman as an agent provocateur to create the climate for a military takeover. In April, a military coup took place after a similar attack with the military using the violence as a justification for the coup. Mr Bernal, mayor of the Libertador municipality in the centre of Caracas, denies any knowledge of the gunman. He said that he believed that De Gouveia suffered from "shizophrenia and paranoia" and had been used by the opposition. "It was a trick to create a provocation," said Mr Bernal who was previously a special forces police officer before entering politics. He suggested that the tape showing De Gouveia at the rally had been tampered with. One senior government official has even claimed that De Gouveia has already confessed to receiving money from a dissident member of the armed forces and admitted to working for the CIA. The official said that he recognised that the allegation was like "Mission Impossible". He said that De Gouveia confessed after being told that there had been a plan to kill him after the shootings, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald was killed after the assassination of President Kennedy. All of this is dismissed by the opposition as a typical fabrication of the government. Whether the full story will ever emerge seems, at present, unlikely. Journalists based in Caracas say the record for such investigations is not hopeful and the secretary general of the Organisation of American States, Cesar Gaviria, has criticised what he sees as a "culture of impunity" in the country. Venezuela remains in limbo as negotiations between the two sides, overseen by the OAS, continue. At the weekend, Mr Chavez rejected a call from White House to defuse the situation by having early elections, arguing that he is only half way through the six year term for which he was elected. His opponents, who claim that he has seriously damaged the economy and behaved autocratically, say that he must go now for the good of the country. Both sides say they fear another shooting similar to that carried out by the mysterious De Gouveia. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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