Venezuela: Cuban agents working for Chavez regime

Venezuela: Cuban agents working for Chavez regime illegally intercepting emails of Venezuelan exiles, diplomats, human rights groups – Americas Forum

A significant portion of the intercepted emails belong to activists, journalists, soldiers, diplomats abroad and known opposition leaders to Hugo Chavez’s regime.

The list, which covers the time period between 2005 and 2006, contains e-mails, along with the passwords, of prominent politicians, including presidential candidate Antonio Ledezma, the former governor Paz Osvaldo Alvarez and Rep. Maria Corina Machado.

The list also include emails Venezuelan military retirees and individuals in Miami.

“This is normal. They control all that, “said former commissioner of the former Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP), Johan Peña, who resides in Miami. “These operations are conducted from the premises of the DIM (Venezuelan Military Intelligence), but they are completely controlled by Cubans.”

The list contains some e-mail addresses and passwords that have since been changed by their owners. However, Pena said, the database is updated regularly and the information held by intelligence agencies under the control of governments in Caracas and Havana is now much larger than the 2005-2006 list obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

The name of Venezuelan journalist Rafael Poleo, owner of the newspaper El Nuevo País and the magazine Zeta, is not in the list obtained by El Nuevo Herald, but an e-mail to his daughter, Patricia Poleo, was intercepted and published in a recent official Venezuelan government website.

“This is normal [...]. In Venezuela, all emails from the opposition are being monitored by the government, “said Poleo, who said he had been informed about this situation by the “best Venezuelan source. ”

Peña noted that even though these activities were initially carried out by Venezuelan members of the DIM, in recent years the operation has been taken over by Cuban agents.

These operations are currently carried out with the most expensive and modern technology and are under the absolute control of people in Havana.

“It’s obviously a touchy subject, even within the government, that this work is being handled by Cubans, but the truth is that Venezuelan intelligence officials have no access to floors where they have these teams,” he said.

He added that the decision to transfer this task to Cuban agents was because it was determined that Venezuelan government personnel were not capable of keeping secret the information collected.

A large number of emails displayed in the list were registered by their owners in popular internet services like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail.

Not all emails are displayed together with the corresponding IP address, but hundreds of them were, which allows much more extensive electronic surveillance.

Patricia Andrade, president of the Venezuela Awareness Foundation in Miami, appears in the list.

The emails of the Venezuela Awareness Foundation, the lead organization that monitors human rights in Venezuela, were intercepted repeatedly by officials of the government of Hugo Chavez, who subsequently tried to make use of information gathered in order to discredit the organization.

In 2006, these efforts were spearheaded by then Minister of Interior and Justice Jesse Chacon, who admitted publicly that the organization had been the target of electronic espionage by the Chavez government.

“Chacón revealed in a press conference that he had all of the intercepted email addresses, and then showed them to journalists,” said Andrade.

The attempt was clumsy, Andrade said, noting that the minister was offering overt proof of violations of civil rights of Venezuelans.

The email list also includes the emails of the Executive Secretary of the Democratic Unity Table (MUD) in Miami, Pedro Mena, who said he was not surprised by the illegal espionage.

“We have been victims of various government attempts to infiltrate our activities,” said Mena. “No wonder we’re on that list. It is a price to be paid in the struggle for democracy and freedom in Venezuela.”