Evidence against jailed Venezuela opposition official shows contradictions

CARACAS — At about 2 a.m. on March 21, eight Venezuelan intelligence agents drove to the home of the top advisor to opposition leader Juan Guaidó and broke down the door.

They searched the bedroom of their suspect – Guaidó’s chief of staff, Roberto Marrero — finding two military-style rifles and a grenade, the agents said in sealed court records reviewed by Reuters and being made public for the first time.

The Sebin intelligence agency, controlled by embattled socialist President Nicolas Maduro, had detailed its evidence against Marrero in two reports that agents said they had compiled six days earlier, on March 15, the court records show. The reports accused Marrero of smuggling guns and explosives from Colombia and posting social media messages that prosecutors would later call treason.

But the reports contradict themselves in ways that suggest the social media evidence was cobbled together only after the raid — not six days before, as the agents and prosecutors attested in court records. And a judge granted the warrant to search for weapons based on the word of a single Sebin agent who never detailed any evidence of smuggling in the warrant application reviewed by Reuters.

One Sebin report includes a screen shot of a Google search on the terms “Roberto Marrero Instagram” that agents said was made at 8:37 a.m. on March 15 – but was in fact conducted at least six days later, as evidenced by the three news stories included in the search results that reported the agents’ March 21 raid of Marrero’s home.

source: nbcnews.com