MIAMI — From a windowless cell in a maximum-security prison in Colombia, Yacsy Alvarez awaits trial on charges she helped organize an attempted armed invasion to overthrow the government in neighboring Venezuela.
Alvarez was a translator and business partner of Jordan Goudreau, the former American Green Beret whose ill-fated plan to depose Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro with a ragtag army he allegedly helped train in the jungles of Colombia ended in disaster last year.
Prosecutors in Colombia said Alvarez helped smuggle weapons to the volunteer army. But she claims she’s being made the scapegoat for the sins of others, including U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who distanced himself from the self-declared freedom fighters. Last month, her attorney asked prosecutors to add Guaido as a co-conspirator in the case.
She’s also lashing out at her accusers in Colombia, who she claims were in contact with the plot’s Venezuelan ringleader. Despite being aware of the soldiers’ movements, she said, Colombian authorities did nothing to stop them — even after Maduro’s vice president, a full seven months before the raid, announced the coordinates of the rebels’ safe houses from the floor of the United Nations General Assembly.