Venezuela’s strongman was directly responsible for the attack on the National Assembly

(Photo: Fernando Llano AP)

Make no mistake: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is directly responsible for the violent July 5 attack against the country’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, and for most of the estimated 90 deaths in anti-government protests over the past three months.

Shortly after the attack by about 200 government-backed armed militias on the National Assembly, where several congressmen, journalists and employees were savagely beaten, Maduro claimed he was not responsible for it. Speaking after governments across the world had expressed their outrage over the incident, Maduro said that “I will never be an accomplice of any act of violence.”

What nerve. There are dozens of pictures and videos taken by those inside the National Assembly building showing how Maduro’s National Guard allowed the pro-government militias — many of them wearing ski masks to hide their faces — into the premises, and stood idly by as the intruders beat the legislators, leaving at least one of them unconscious.

“The national guardsmen at the door gave free passage to the demonstrators to get into the Assembly building,” congressman Leonardo Regnault, who was beaten in the head, told CNN en Español’s Fernando del Rincon that night. At least five legislators were wounded.

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