Venezuela forces take down fugitive group in deadly shootout

Venezuelan special forces on Monday captured five members of a band led by a rebellious police officer who has been on the run since stealing a helicopter and launching grenades at government buildings in the capital last year.

Oscar Perez, a rogue helicopter pilot who vanished last year after dropping grenades on Venezuela's Supreme Court, said he and his companions were surrounded and pinned down by police marksmen. July 13, 2017
Reuters

Oscar Perez, a rogue helicopter pilot who vanished last year after dropping grenades on Venezuela's Supreme Court, said he and his companions were surrounded and pinned down by police marksmen. July 13, 2017

Several people, including two police officers, were killed in an operation to capture a helicopter pilot who bombed Venezuela's Supreme Court during anti-government protests last year, the interior ministry said Monday.

A ministry statement said members of a "terrorist cell" were killed in a fierce gunbattle, and five were captured but did not say whether the pilot, Oscar Perez, was among the dead or detained.

At the height of street protests against President Nicolas Maduro last June, Perez and unidentified accomplices flew over Caracas in a police helicopter and dropped four grenades on the Supreme Court before opening fire on the interior ministry. There were no casualties.

Perez has been on the run since Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant through Interpol after accusing him of a "terrorist attack."

The 36-year-old former elite police officer and actor has regularly taunted the government during his time in hiding, saying he was fighting against Maduro's "tyranny" and the "narco-dictatorship."

Two weeks after the attack on the Supreme Court, Perez – at the time Venezuela's most-wanted man – turned up at a Caracas ceremony to commemorate those who had died in the wave of anti-government protests.

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Dramatic videos

"These terrorists, who were heavily armed with high-caliber weapons, opened fire on the officials responsible for their capture," the interior ministry statement said.

It said those who resisted had been killed.

The police were "attacked violently" when they were negotiating the surrender of Perez's group, it said, adding that they had "tried to detonate a vehicle loaded with explosives."

Perez said in a video released on Twitter earlier on Monday that he and his companions were surrounded and pinned down by police marksmen on a roadway at El Junquito on the outskirts of Caracas.

"They are firing at us with grenade launchers. We said we are going to surrender but they do not want to let us surrender. They want to kill us," a bloodied Perez said in one of several dramatic videos posted online.

Perez, a former elite police officer, is seen with other men in one of the videos, some of them armed.

He said they were being besieged by snipers.

In December, Perez claimed responsibility for an attack on a military base in the country's north, in which weapons were seized.

AFP

Perez has been on the run since Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant through Interpol after accusing him of a "terrorist attack." January 15, 2018

In all, 125 people were killed between April and July as authorities used force to put down protests to unseat Maduro.

Eventually, the protests fizzled out and the socialist president prevailed, despite a staggering crisis caused by falling oil prices, spiralling inflation and corruption.

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