Venezuela claims to have captured two Americans involved in failed invasion

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In a lengthy speech Monday night, Maduro decried an ongoing “terrorist” assault on Venezuela that he said had led him to dispatch 25,000 reservists to the coasts. He displayed images that apparently depicted the two apprehended Americans in a lineup, one of them forced to lower his head by a captor.

U.S. officials and the mainstream Venezuelan opposition headed by Juan Guaidó have strongly denied any connection with the operation, which allegedly involved several dozen men, most of them defectors from the Venezuelan military who had been living hand-to-mouth in camps in Colombia. Former Venezuelan National Guard officer Javier Nieto Quintero and former U.S. Army Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, head of a Florida company that says it offers paid strategic security services, released a video Sunday announcing the start of “Operation Gideon” and calling on Venezuelan soldiers to join them.

Goudreau, in an interview with The Washington Post, confirmed that two Americans in what he says was a force of about 60 men were captured Monday along with six Venezuelans. He identified the Americans as Airan Berry and Luke Denman. Also captured was one of the operation’s leaders, former Capt. Antonio Sequea.

Goudreau, who went public with the operation Sunday, said he provided false information to try to protect operatives still in harm’s way. He said Sunday that his forces had already entered Venezuela by land and sea.

But Monday, he said that Berry and Denman had been in a boat off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast on Sunday when Maduro’s government intercepted another of the operation’s vessels. He confirmed the Maduro government’s claim Sunday that eight people were killed and two captured by Venezuelan forces, which apparently had been tipped off to their arrival.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-maduro-says-two-americans-captured-in-failed-invasion-attempt/2020/05/04/11630f82-8e6b-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html