Venezuelan journalist asks for political asylum in Peru

Politics
Venezuelan journalist Rodolfo "Popo" Barráez is in Lima to ask for political asylum in Peru in the coming days, after Venezuelan judicial authorities issued a bench warrant against for him for the alleged crime of defamation, reported the Peruvian press.

The former mayor of Coro (the capital of the northwestern state of Falcón) arrived to in Lima on November 20, after the former governor of Falcón, Jesús Montilla, sued him for defaming Alcides Goitía, the mayor of the city of Puntoof Punto Fijo, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio said, as reported by Efe.

The Venezuelan authorities issued on November 11 an arrest warrant against for Barráez, whose home as well as his mother's were raided by enforcement officials.

Barráez was tried in 2003, after he reported the case of the so-called "pits of death" about the alleged existence of death squads in the state of Falcón, a the Peruvian newspaper reported.

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IISS: The FARC financed Chávez before 1999

10:07 AM. DIPLOMACY. Admired by the Colombian guerrilla after his coup attempt in 1992, the then lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez Frías received financial support by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) for his projects after his capture that year. This mostly explains the relationship and "debt" between the parties, as revealed by a paper of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of the United Kingdom.