Venezuela: anti-Maduro battle isn't over as ex-US soldier says he launched raid

A former US special forces soldier linked to a murky and apparently bungled attempt to topple Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has insisted his troops are still in action after launching “a daring amphibious raid” into the country.

In a video released late on Sunday – hours after Maduro’s government claimed it had foiled a United States-backed sea “invasion” near Venezuela’s main international airport – Jordan Goudreau claimed the battle was not over.

Related: The plot that failed: how Venezuela's 'uprising' fizzled

“Our men are continuing to fight right now,” claimed the 43-year-old American citizen, who was last week linked to what was described as an audacious but half-baked plot to invade Venezuela and remove its leader. “Our units have been activated in the south, west and east of Venezuela.”

The former US special forces medic, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, offered no evidence for those claims and it was unclear where the video had been recorded. There were no reports of fighting in the capital, Caracas.

But earlier on Sunday Venezuela’s leaders claimed they had frustrated what they called a US-backed assault near the port city of La Guaira, 20 miles north of Caracas, killing eight alleged assailants.

Venezuela’s interior minister, Néstor Reverol, claimed a platoon of “terrorist mercenaries” had tried to make landfall using speedboats but been repelled by security forces.

“Some were shot down and others detained,” Reverol said in a televised statement, accusing the group of plotting to assassinate the leaders of Venezuela’s “revolutionary government”.

Reverol said “a meticulous land, sea and air search” was under way to capture any remaining invaders, vowing: “We will remain in permanent state of alert and resistance.”

In a telephone interview with the Washington Post on Sunday night, Goudreau claimed the operation had involved “60 troops”, including two former US special forces members, who had arrived in Venezuela by land and sea.

Speaking to the Associated Press on Monday, Goudreau claimed 52 of those fighters – including two US veterans – had infiltrated Venezuelan territory and were “in the first stage of a mission to recruit members of the security forces to join their cause”.

“I don’t care about politics,” he said. “I care about my men on the ground right now who are in the most dangerous phase of the operation.”

Venezuela’s defense minister, who was last year accused of plotting against Maduro, appeared on state television flanked by armoured vehicles and heavily armed troops clutching assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade.

“A group of mercenaries has attempted to trample our sacred soils and has received an emphatic response from our the weapons of our republic,” Vladimir Padrino López said, denouncing what he called a “crass” imperialist incursion. Padrino López said Maduro had ordered troops to scour the country’s Caribbean coastline for accomplices.

The commotion comes almost a year to the day after a botched attempt to remove Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian successor from power.

On 30 April 2019 opposition leader Juan Guaidó – who dozens of countries, including the US and UK, recognize as Venezuela’s legitimate interim leader – sought to spark a pre-dawn military uprising dubbed “Operation Freedom”.

But those efforts fizzled and Maduro remains in power, albeit facing massive challenges as a result of Venezuela’s continued social and economic meltdown and now, the Covid-19 crisis, which doctors fear could bring the country’s crippled health system to its knees.

Guaidó denied any involvement in the alleged invasion on Monday although Goudreau provided a Miami-based journalist with an eight-page services contract supposedly signed by Guaidó and two political advisers in October for $213m.

Sunday’s supposed invasion is the latest chapter in the bizarre and shady tale of an apparently ongoing plot to overthrow Maduro that is being partly led by Goudreau, a sharpshooting, muscle-bound mixed martial arts enthusiast from Florida.

In a lengthy report on Goudreau’s travails last week, the Associated Press claimed he had founded a private security company called Silvercorp USA in 2018 and last year decided to capitalize on Donald Trump’s obsession with overthrowing Maduro.

The report said Goudreau subsequently came into contact with Clíver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan army major general who has admitted to plotting against Maduro and handed himself over to US authorities in late March after being indicted in the US on drug trafficking charges.

Alcalá reportedly told Goudreau he had three camps of willing combatants waiting near Colombia’s border with Venezuela and the American offered to train them for “a rapid-strike operation” to take out Maduro.

Goudreau reportedly boasted of high-level contacts in the Trump administration but the news agency said it had found no evidence of US support for his actions.