Posted on 08/05/2002 3:23:36 PM PDT by flamefront
CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A band of armed supporters of President Hugo Chavez's self-styled "revolution" has threatened opposition leaders and metropolitan police after claiming responsibility for a sniper attack Friday that wounded five people in a poor Caracas neighborhood.
Wearing camouflage fatigues and hoods and brandishing automatic rifles, four members of the "Carapaica Revolutionary Group" told local newspapers they did not support the Chavez government, but rather followed the revolutionary "process" of the outspoken, left-wing leader.
Chavez and other high-ranking officials on Monday suggested the reports were fabricated by the opposition hoping to destabilize his three-year-old rule.
"If it's true ... that there are groups, armed and hooded, to defend the government, I ask them to think again because the government doesn't need the help of armed groups," the president said.
Last week's gun attack marked the most violent incident in Venezuela since a failed coup against Chavez by rebel military and civilian leaders four months ago. Deep political divisions still rattle his oil-rich South American nation, as supporters and foes of the fiery president blame each other for more than 60 deaths during the April 11-14 rebellion.
News photographs on Monday showed the four men armed with automatic rifles and handguns. The group's name is taken from a South American Indian leader who battled against the region's Spanish colonial rulers.
Speaking to local reporters from an apartment in an impoverished district of the Venezuelan capital, a man calling himself Commander Murachi said the group would target metropolitan police officers, opposition leaders and also dissident government officials.
"We consider the leaders of the opposition a military objective. We are like cats, we are lying in wait for our prey. The moment will come for each one of them," Murachi was quoted as saying.
PART OF THE PEOPLE
Venezuelan state officials have accused the metropolitan police of abuses and heavy-handed crackdowns on recent protests by government supporters. The metropolitan police force is controlled by Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, a bitter enemy of the president and a top opposition leader.
"Today in Caracas we now have urban guerrillas," Pena told reporters.
Opposition leaders often claim other pro-Chavez groups - the Bolivarian Circles set up to provide social services to poor areas -- act as armed shock troops for the government.
Since April, jitters over political violence have kept Venezuela on edge. In June a broadcast by hooded men claiming to be dissident military officers who threatened another coup against Chavez sent Caracas residents scurrying to stock up on guns and extra supplies.
Until last week such threats were mostly limited to words.
Murachi claimed responsibility for Friday's attack during which hooded men armed with high-caliber rifles ambushed an armored police patrol in the crime-ridden "January 23" neighborhood in western Caracas, wounding a police officer and at least four civilians.
Chavez last week blamed the violence on small groups of anarchists, but opposition leaders claimed pro-government groups were behind the attacks.
"We believe in resistance and you can not call us anarchists because we are part of the people," Murachi said from the neighborhood, a hotbed of Chavez support.
The gun attack last week followed outbreaks of street violence after the Supreme Court postponed a decision on whether to indict four military officers accused in April's brief coup against Chavez. Demonstrators, who clashed with police, demanded the alleged coup plotters be jailed.
But Murachi denied supporting the government and the ruling Fifth Republic Movement party. He said the group followed the principles of Marxism and revolutionary legend Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who has become a popular symbol at demonstrations by Chavez supporters.
Chavez, elected on a social reform platform in 1998, has promised to aid the poor with his "revolutionary" policies, such as land reform, cheap credits and a tighter state control over the nation's oil industry.
But political foes of the former paratrooper, who directed a botched coup in 1992, blame his left-leaning economic and social reforms for fomenting class conflict and driving the world's No. 5 oil exporter into recession.
This will clear things up perhaps once and for all and force Chavez's true colors to come out.
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