Venezuelan General's Tweet Leads to Armed Standoff

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Retired Venezuelan Army Gen. Angel Vivas, armed and wearing a flak jacket, stands on his property in Caracas, Venezuela, on Feb. 23.

Image: Juan Manuel Hernandez/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-02-24 19:01:49 UTC

A 57-year-old retired Venezuelan general resisted arrest by Venezuelan authorities in an armed standoff on Sunday.

President Nicolas Maduro ordered the arrest of retired army Gen. Angel Vivas after Vivas suggested last week that his Twitter followers use stretched transparent wire to knock down policemen on motorbikes. Venezuelan security forces came looking for him on Sunday, but he resisted the arrest with the help of a crowd of supporters, after tweeting he was being assaulted.

See also: Is Venezuela's Government Tightening Its Grip on the Internet?

"Cuban and Venezuelan henchmen, along with criminal groups are arriving at my house," he tweeted to his more 200,000 followers.

Armed with an assault rifle and donning a flak jacket, he faced the authorities, shouting: "I'm not going to surrender," according to the Associated Press.

Neighbors alerted by his tweet on Sunday started live-tweeting the standoff, uploading pictures of the incident.

Venezuelan authorities came to arrest him after Maduro blamed him for the death of a government supporter, who was knocked down by a booby trap set up in Caracas on Friday night. Last week, Vivas had suggested protesters to use similar techniques against policemen riding motobikes.

"To neutralize motorized groups from the dictatorship you have to place nylon wire in the streets, 1.20 metres high, to knock them down and then you can use the bikes," he tweeted.

Vivas resigned as head of the Defense Ministry's engineering department in 2007, refusing to swear the Cuba-inspired oath "Fatherland, socialism or death." Ever since, he's become a fierce government critic, according to the AP.

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Topics: US & World, Venezuela, Venezuela protests, World