In last night’s television program Con el mazo dando, broadcast by Venezolana de Televisión, Cabello, also vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), detailed the destabilizing work of these two journalists.
Venezuela Expels Two European Journalists for Illegal Activities
He explained that O’Reilly and Sackur entered Venezuela as tourists on March 14, in a private plane that landed at Porlamar airport, from Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago, and with support from the non-governmental organization Transparencia Venezuela (Venezuela Transparency).
This organization, Cabello added, was one of the right-wing groups that called on the Organization of American States (OAS) to implement the Inter-American Democratic Charter and incite foreign intervention to overthrow the current government.
O’Reilly is known as a research journalist, specializing in conducting interviews through secret filming and alongside Sackur, they have a controversial BBC one-on-one interview programme, known as HARDtalk.
Cabello added that on March 20, both European citizens were discovered, along with two people who assisted them as translators, in the vicinity of Ramo Verde prison, where the opposition leader Leopoldo López, leader of the extreme right group Voluntad Popular (Popular Will), serves sentence.
When questioned, O’Reilly acknowledged to the Venezuelan authorities that he was hired by a relative of Lopez to do a report about his life in prison.
Leopoldo López is serving a 13-year, nine-month, seven-day sentence for participating in and promoting the fire and damage offenses that were carried out as part of a plan to oust the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
He was also tried and punished on instigation to commit crime, public intimidation, damage to state property, and intentional homicide.
