McClatchy is reporting Venezuelan authorities have uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city.
The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The plane has made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term.
Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz said, “This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States.” This comes as the United States is openly pushing for the toppling of Maduro’s government.
CIA CONNECTIONS ?
The denials by Air 21 only added to the mystery of the alleged shipment — a mystery compounded by perhaps coincidental ties between the chairman and a key employee of 21 Air with a company that Amnesty International says once took part in a CIA program to whisk suspected terrorists to “black site” jails around the world, a procedure known as rendition.
The chairman and majority owner of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, has set up or registered at least 14 other companies in Florida over the past two decades.
Among the people brought on to 21 Air when it formed in 2014 was Michael Steinke, its director of quality control.
Both men appear to have either coincidental or direct ties to Gemini Air Cargo, a company that Amnesty International described in a 2006 report as being among more than 30 air charter services believed to have taken part in a CIA program of rendition in which suspected terrorists were abducted abroad and taken to third-country secret “black sites” for interrogation.
Steinke worked for Gemini Air Cargo from 1996 into 1997, years before the rendition program got off the ground, according to a 2016 Department of Transportation document that gave a summary of 21 Air’s operations as an air cargo carrier.
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