Report: Venezuela is spying on Jewish community
Venezuela's secret service SEBIN is spying on the
country's Jewish community, according to purportedly leaked documents recently
posted online.
Last week Analisis24, a right-leaning Argentinean news
website, released 50 documents attributed to the Venezuelan intelligence agency
containing private information on prominent Venezuelan Jews, local Jewish
organizations and Israeli diplomats in Latin America.
The papers include a dossier on Espacio Anna Frank, a
coexistence group in the capital Caracas, with clandestinely taken photos of
its offices and private information on its personnel including their home
addresses, passport numbers and recent travel itineraries.
It identifies the organization as a "strategic arm
of the Israeli intelligence agency in the country," the Mossad, and as a
front for "far right-wing Zionists" to recruit agents using
"subversive socio-political influence."
Other documents declare the local Jewish community has
benefited from the "political and military interference" of the
United States in the South American country's affairs and accuses its members,
like journalist Abraham Belilty Bittan and former parliamentarian Paulina
Gamus, of being foreign agents.
The Anti-Defamation League said on Wednesday the report
was deeply troubling and was a further sign of the government of Hugo Chavez's
e inveterate bias against Jews.
"It is chilling to read reports that the SEBIN
received instructions to carry out clandestine surveillance operations against
members of the Jewish community, as described in detail in documents leaked by
the Argentinean website Analisis24," the ADL said in a statement. "In
a country where the government and some of its followers have publicly accused
the Jewish community of disloyalty and where the community's institutions and
houses of worship have been attacked, reports of this kind of surveillance add
fuel to an already incendiary atmosphere inciting prejudice and hate."
The ADL said the wealth of detailed and private
information included in the documents lent credence to its authenticity.
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