June 25, 2001, 11:00
Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's ex-spy chief and Latin America's most wanted man who was captured in Caracas on Saturday, was expelled by Venezuela early today to face trial at home, Venezuelan television said.
Globovision said Montesinos was flown out of Caracas aboard a Peruvian plane accompanied by Antonio Ketin Vidal, Peru's Interior Minister, who had traveled from Lima to collect him.
The TV showed a distant balding figure in a dark jacket, whom it said was Montesinos.
Journalists were not allowed to approach the plane and were forced to watch from a distance.
Venezuelan officials did not immediately confirm the overnight departure but Ketin Vidal told reporters earlier at the airport that Montesinos was being expelled by Venezuela and would arrive back in Lima early today.
His capture, announced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez yesterday at an Andean summit, ended an eight-month manhunt fort he ex-aide to Peru's disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori.
The shadowy 56-year-old ex-intelligence advisor, who triggered a crisis last year that toppled Fujimori and rocked Peru's political establishment, faces trial for crimes ranging from corruption and drug-trafficking to running death squads.
Peru had put a $5 million price on the head of the fugitive, who allegedly bankrolled Peru's Congress, courts, military and media in exchange for favors during Fujimori's decade-long rule.
Questions remain in Venezuela
While Chavez hailed the capture as a triumph for Andean co-operation and Venezuela's security services, unanswered questions remained about how Montesinos had managed to stay undetected in the South American country for so long.
The outspoken Venezuelan para trooper-turned-president, who described Montesinos as a "mysterious gentleman" shrouded in "legends" and "half truths", said the fugitive was picked up by military intelligence agents in Caracas Saturday night.
"Now we have to investigate which network or group were hiding him," he said, without giving details.
Far from being dispelled, the mystery surrounding
Montesinos' movements in Venezuela appeared to deepen with his capture. Luis Miquilena,
Venezuelan Interior Minister said yesterday that "we knew he was here (in Venezuela)."
But this statement was in sharp contrast to the government's previous extreme reluctance to confirm that the fugitive, who had been tracked through the Galapagos islands, Costa Rica and Aruba, was on Venezuelan soil.
Only last Wednesday, Eliezer Otayza, the outgoing head of Venezuela's intelligence services (DISIP), said he had "serious doubts" that Montesinos was ever in Venezuela.
Chavez presented Montesinos' capture as the successful result of a joint investigation by Venezuelan and Peruvian authorities and the international police body Interpol.
However, the Venezuelan president insisted that the Montesinos case had been used by his enemies to attack him and his left-leaning "revolutionary" government.
He cited what he called the deliberately fabricated "legend" that he had been sheltering Montesinos.
Peruvian politicians and Venezuela's opposition-dominated media had suggested that Chavez, who staged an abortive 1992 coup before winning elections six years later, might have been protecting Montesinos to repay an old debt of gratitude.
According to this theory, Chavez was repaying the fugitive spy chief's former master, Fujimori, for refuge in Peru granted to another group of Venezuelan military plotters who failed in a separate 1992 coup attempt.
After Montesinos fled Peru last October, Venezuelan officials initially bluntly denied he was in Venezuela.
However, when a Caracas doctor announced in April he had performed plastic surgery on Montesinos last December, they grudgingly admitted he may have entered Venezuela.
Peru's Ketin Vidal said yesterday Montesinos was in good health and had "very similar physical characteristics to the ones that we all know."
"He has no beard, nothing additional," he added, in comments which seemed to cast doubt on the plastic surgery story. - Reuters
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