DORAL, Fla. – On Saturday night, during a televised speech at an event related to the disputed presidential election in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro stood next to several men who wore traditional Arab headdresses known as keffiyeh or hatta.
Israel struck Iran-backed targets in Gaza, Yemen, and Lebanon. The U.S. military announced there were strikes in Syria to kill dozens of Islamic militants. Maduro reacted to the killing of Hezbollah’s veteran leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during an Israeli airstrike on Friday in Beirut.
“I want to express, on behalf of the historic revolutionary bloc and the Bolivarian forces of Venezuela, our solidarity with Hezbollah, with his family, and with the people of Lebanon, and to condemn this crime,” Maduro said in Spanish. “And the attack was ordered from the United Nations headquarters in New York, and the cowards of the world remain silent, but the rebellious people will not be silenced.”
Meanwhile, in South Florida, hundreds of Maduro’s opponents dressed in white met at the Downtown Doral Park in Miami-Dade County during a vigil to support Venezuela’s exiled opposition. There were signs of support for Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran against Maduro on July 28 and sought asylum on Sept. 8, in Madrid, Spain.
With Maria Corina Machado’s support and a network of volunteers, the Venezuelan opposition published tallies online as evidence that Gonzalez, 75, a retired diplomat, had won the presidential election by a landslide. Venezuela’s ruling loyalists controlled the electoral process and declared Maduro the winner of the election.
The ruling party also controls the judicial system, so they criminalized dissent and imprisoned thousands charging them mostly with terrorism and treason. Dozens died during protests and riots in the streets of Venezuela and many feared the Venezuelan diaspora was growing. Maduro’s speech on Saturday did not mention them.
Instead, he “called on the people of the world, the Muslim nations and the Arab people to raise their voices and show solidarity with the Palestinian people and the people of Lebanon,” Maduro said.
Maduro has long supported Iran-backed militias. Federal agents took notice when in a speech about a decade ago Maduro referred to Adel El Zebayar, a Venezuelan-Syrian politician who served in the National Assembly, as a “close friend.”
Over four years ago, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration accused El Zebayar of working with high-ranking Venezuelan officials known as the “Cártel de Los Soles,” Marxist–Leninist guerrilla fighters in Colombia, and Mexican narcotraffickers to use “cocaine as a weapon” against the U.S.
Maduro publicly praised El Zebayar for taking up arms in Syria. There was a trail of photos on social media showing El Zebayar holding up weapons with militants. El Zebayar’s bio on X says in Spanish: “Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad, and David preceded Karl Marx, they were the first communists.”
El Zebayar’s profile picture on Facebook for years is a picture with the late Hugo Chavez and Bashar al-Assad, who has been the president of Syria for over two decades. Hezbollah sided with al-Assad fighting against fellow Muslims for over a decade with the support of Iran and Russia.
Concerned about this and other findings, U.S Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez, and Maria Elvira Salazar signed and sent a 2021 letter to President Joe Biden’s administration condemning Iran for providing “petroleum, financial, and military support to the Maduro dictatorship” that in turn provided “gold from reserves belonging to the Venezuelan people.” They also warned against “engagement and concessions” to Iran.
The U.S. lawmakers also mentioned Salman Raouf Salman, a Colombian-Lebanese Hezbollah operative with alleged connections to the Marxist–Leninist guerrilla fighters in Colombia that had allied with El Zebayar. U.S. federal prosecutors charged him last year with terrorism charges for allegedly being behind the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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