OK, so it is just the "condensed" version of an AP dispatch but the NYT felt it worth a tweet...
If you want details go to an African release which will tell you how sordid Venezuela's "diplomacy" has become. In Kenya's embassy we had an ambassador dismissed for gay sexual harassment, a replacing ambassador murdered within days of her arrival and an embassy secretary charged with the murder, linked to drug traffic through his use of diplomatic privilege and his local friend/lover on the run. It cannot get any better than that for scandal. Unless you want to add to it the ease in which Venezuela relinquished the diplomatic immunity of the arrested secretary in a country where death penalty exists.....
But then again what can you expect? Venezuelan old experienced diplomatic personnel has been ditched and replaced by a chorus of people whose main to lone function is to promote Chavez and not Venezuela. It has been years that there is no such a thing as Venezuelan foreign policy and now we see the consequences.
By the way, why on hell do we need an embassy in Kenya?
Former Ambasssador Gerardo Carrillo Silva denies the accusations os sexual harrassment:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.el-nacional.com/noticia/45508/11/ex-embajador-venezolano-en-kenia-rechaza-acusaciones-de-acoso-sexual.html
Given the new allegations linking Secretary Dwight Sagaray with a drug trafficking network, it seems to me that it was probably a plot of Mr. Sagaray to get rid of Mr. Carrillo and take control of the Embassy to run his drug business freely. The accusers might have been bribed or were part of Mr. Sagaray's business...
At this point, it's all speculative, but it's not that far-fetched.
Except that Carillo has waited too long to speak out. Blameless he ain't.
DeleteHe's probably not a saint, but what is he responsible for? Sexual harrasment? Drug trafficking? Being a silent witness of how corrupt and mediocre our ministry of foreign affairs is? All of the above?
Deletethat is wrong Carrillo is the one guilty of everyone, he never like first secretary and he hates olga fonseca, am sure he plan everything from the beggining and remember that he ran away from kenya for sexual harassment. Carrillo is an asshole !!!!!!!
DeleteThe news is not just in NYT. It is all over the place: in Russian, Norwegian or Flemish news. The story is indeed so incredibly murky...Graham Greene, we shall produce something better than what you wrote.
ReplyDeleteKenya? Good question, but then
we have a bloody embassy in Mali, of all places!
http://venezuelamali.blogspot.be/
Mind: I know a thing or two about Mali as I love Mali music and I have a couple of friends who have been there...I can't think why on Earth we may have been interested in that place for anything unless someone were sending drug cargos there...oops....talking about that, do you remember the Venezuelan aircraft that went down there and had two tones of cocaine (but which was unloaded before the authorities could arrived)?
Look at the crappy content of that blog by Venezuelan staff in Mali: it's all the same old story of old commies who were listening to Alí Primera for decades without doing anything else with their wee brains.
As I reported earlier, Venezuelan engineers and workers built a couple of urbanizations in Mali a couple of years ago while Belorussians are "busy" building in Venezuela.
Venezuela has apparently an embassy in Congo
http://www.radiomundial.com.ve/node/171129
Actually: we have a lot of embassies in a lot of places:
embassies
Hm...I think I will be blogging on the embassies as well.
Not that I wish to promote the ND rag, but in this instance, it was a fascinating read with reader conjectures and contributions rampant: http://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=889606 .
ReplyDeleteIn sum, the theory of a drug pipeline gains primacy over the homosexual angle, the latter a punishable offence in Kenya.
As an irrelevant sideline, but one that might explain Fonseca's appearance, apparently her health was precarious, with difficulties in obtaining medication for her miathenia gravis. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001731/
Do you mean that chasing your African employees while holding your sick in your hand is a worse offense than selling them drugs?
DeleteSeriously now. No matter what angle we look at this, it a major mess. I bet you that as of now Venezuelan embassies are going to be closely watched in many countries. The story of the damage done to Venezuela by chavismo is barely starting to told. Read for example today Bocaranda on the Olympic officials in London.
Evidently, the ND reader contribution over Kenya's policy on homosexual rights is not quite accurate.
DeleteWriting comments from a tablet is a tricky thing. The spell checker does not work as in my lap top. Words are erased or changed even if I change them back.... Sorry.
DeleteThis being said: dick not sick. Though the adjective can be applied to the word. Maybe Boca knows about that too; as much as fissured femurs?
gender-imposed constraints forbid me to talk in public about male anatomical features. so sad.
DeleteBoca's read over Vz bureaucratic ineptudes and cover-ups do not surprise. How I wish that Boca were a more reliable, more solid source of information. How do you rely on someone who's still trying to cram down people's throats (as of last week's runrun.es) that Chávez has issues with a fractura al "brazo del fémur" and the routine over his "ducto sanguíneo", both of these terms not medically viable, unless of course, the source is Cuban medicine, for which there are altogether different standards ...
ReplyDeleteI'm only commenting because I CAN! (ok, needed to get that off my chest) How many other embassies might be conducting the same drug in diplomatic pouches scheme?
ReplyDeleteBaiting?
DeleteIf drug trafficking via diplomatic 'valija' was happening in Kenya's Vz embassy, and pre-Fonseca attempts to intervene and 'clean up' caused bogus claims of sexual impropriety (no sé, digo yo), then some responsibility for Fonseca's murder rests with Maduro and crew at MinPoPo. For I suspect they knew what was going on, through the 'interrogatorio' of Carrillo Silva, two months earlier. And yet they sent Fonseca regardless. How do send an unhealthy, female envoy to an embassy den of drugs, without assuming some responsibility?
ReplyDeleteWhich is of course part of the scandal: how ill treated in general is legation staff. Not only that, but they brought her out of retirement!
Delete"they brought her out of retirement!"
DeleteThat's one way to eliminate pension payments.
Just a question Daniel:
ReplyDeleteHow would you have felt if Venezuela had not removed the diplomatic inmunity to the accuser?
I know it is a tricky situation, given the possibility of death penalty, but I have heard so many stories of diplomatic inmunity abuse that I am not too critical of it.
What would have been the "right" thing to do then? Try the guy in Venezuela? I don't know if that is possible under Venezuelan penal law.
Bruni
DeleteEuropean embassies will not lift immunity in a U.S. State that applies death penalty. Admittedly there are probably few consulates in such states.
What Venezuela should have done is extract a judiciary promise that death penalty would not be the sentence. Failure to get it there are other options. For example retain at the embassy during trial the guy and surrender him after the trial once death penalty is discarded. Or some other suitable arrangement. After all a provisional "jail" could be set on the grounds for the duration of the trial.
The speed at which venezuela waived immunity makes me wonder if they even bothered checking the possible penalties. They simply got rid of the case, too busy reelecting Chavez.
I agree. Yet, we know so little of this case from the government side that maybe they negotiated the removal of the death penalty before lifting the inmunity. This is wishful thinking: I am just giving them the benefit of a doubt.
DeleteThe question is how come no journalist has asked the question to the government? This is exactly the type of questions that journalists should make.
Does anybody have any biography on this guy Dwight Sagaray. There seems to be no information available on who he is and where in Venezuela he is from.
ReplyDeletethis is the closest I could get, Ken: http://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13452778#13452778
Deleteand more ...
Deletehttp://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13449151#13449151
http://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13450425#13450425
peripherally related:
http://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13449254#13449254
And more. Gracias amigo. http://www.noticierodigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13414068&sid=9fe1dea753fe80c5da0c99fb810c2474
ReplyDelete