By The newspaper
08 Apr 2024, 17:40 PM EDT
The chancellor of the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro, Yvan Gil, assured this Monday that the transnational criminal gang known as Tren de Aragua does not exist and that it is an international media invention, despite multiple investigations that indicate that the megagang has operations within and outside Venezuela, and has recently arrived in the United States.
“The Aragua Train is a fiction created by the international media to try to create a non-existent label, as they did at the time with the Cartel of the Suns (…) which was shown to not exist, to have never existed,” he said. Gil in a statement in front of the Foreign Minister of Colombia, Luis Gilberto Murillo, as reported by the EFE agency.
According to Gil, “now they invent a so-called Aragua Train, an organization that existed in Venezuela, localized, and which they later tried to brand. We have seen, for example, how ridiculously videos appear even of people saying ‘we are from the Arangua Train’, with a Peruvian accent, with a Chilean accent.”
“That is, it is about creating a brand,” the Venezuelan minister insisted, according to EFE.
The chancellor of the Maduro regime asserted that the Venezuelan authorities have demonstrated “the nonexistence of the Aragua Train.” Likewise, he assured that they have collaboration in matters of citizen security and combating organized crime with other entities in the region.
He also referred to former President Donald Trump, who has previously referred to the transnational mega-gang. This, according to Gil, is because “they want to speak badly about Venezuela.” “They have invented that now there is an organization from Venezuela called Tren de Aragua and that it affects the world,” he said.
The records of the Aragua Train
Despite what the Venezuelan Foreign Minister said, multiple investigations have warned not only of the existence of the Aragua Train, but that its presence has spread to various countries in America, including the United States.
Even Gil’s statement contradicts that of Venezuela’s own attorney general, Tarek William Saab, who last month acknowledged the existence of the Aragua Train, although he suggested that it does not have as much power as has been reported and that it has been “oversized” in the outside.
“It has been oversized and power has been assigned to the Aragua Train that it does not actually have,” said the official, of Chavista line, during a press conference.
However, detainees of the mega-gang have been reported in various countries such as Peru, Chile and the United States. For this reason, a group of Republicans has recently asked the Biden administration to declare the Aragua Train a criminal organization.
The Aragua Train has been widely investigated, highlighting the investigation of the Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez, author of the book “The Aragua Train. The gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America”, in which she tells the origin of the gang in a Venezuelan prison and its expansion across the continent.
Keep reading:
• Another member of the Tren de Aragua was arrested for the terrible murder of a man in Florida
• The alleged brother of Niño Guerrero, leader of the bloodthirsty Aragua Train, was arrested in Spain
• Congressmen asked Joe Biden to declare the Aragua Train as a transnational criminal group