Rubio renews US hard line with Venezuela plane seizure

SANTO DOMINGO (AFP) : US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday supervised the seizure of a second aircraft belonging to Venezuela’s leftist government in less than a year, showing a hard line despite nascent diplomacy.

Rubio, a passionate opponent of Latin America’s leftist authoritarians like Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, witnessed the confiscation of the aircraft at the end of his first trip in the job, which took him to five countries of Latin America.

Rubio traveled to a military airstrip in the capital Santo Domingo where, in front of cameras, a Dominican Republic prosecutor and US law enforcement representative together taped a sign that said “seized” on a Dassault Falcon 200 jet bearing a Venezuelan flag.

“We are very grateful to the Dominican Republic for participating and cooperating with the US justice system,” Rubio said in an interview with SIN News.

“The message is that when there are sanctions because they are violating human rights, they are violating a whole series of things, traveling to Iran, helping countries that really wish harm to the United States,” he said, “these sanctions are going to be applied and reinforced.”

Dominican Republic authorities detained the aircraft last year after US authorities said it had violated unilateral US sanctions against Venezuela.

Venezuelan officials used the plane to fly to Greece, Turkiye, Russia, Nicaragua and Cuba, and had taken it to the Dominican Republic for maintenance, according to the US State Department.

Maduro’s oil minister also used the plane to attend a meeting of the OPEC oil cartel in the United Arab Emirates in 2019, according to the Treasury Department.

In September, the United States, under then-president Joe Biden, announced the seizure of a first Venezuelan government airplane in the Dominican Republic that had been used to transport Maduro on international trips.

President Donald Trump has long vowed to clamp down on Maduro and in his first term unsuccessfully sought to remove him, after wide international questioning on the legitimacy of Maduro’s re-election.

But an envoy from Trump, Richard Grenell, last week traveled to Caracas to meet with Maduro, securing the release of six US prisoners.

Venezuela said the talks were held with “mutual respect,” but Rubio and other US officials have insisted that there was no backtracking on the US refusal to accept Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

Rubio said that Venezuela remained a concern for US national security, pointing to the mass migration from it as the economy implodes.

“Venezuela is an issue of national security, not just of lack of democracy,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Guatemala.

“It is about a government — a regime — that has harmed more than seven million Venezuelans, and all the neighboring countries that have had to face the reality of this massive migration,” he said, referring to Venezuelans who have left.

Grenell also pressed Maduro to accept the return of Venezuelans deported from the United States.

Trump quickly after taking office stripped roughly 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States of protection from deportation.

Biden had refused to deport them due to the security and economic crises in Venezuela.