“Guerrilla Filmmaking – a True Story” Part III

The day General Marcos Ferreira and I met marked the beginning of a manhunt that would define me as a storyteller and a citizen of two countries at odds with one another.

 

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I had a plan – I’d go back to NY to put together a team and a few bucks to shoot the first part of the documentary – two to three weeks is all it would take. I was excited and persevered, but five weeks later five thousand dollars is all I could get – The subject matter was too sensitive and investors who were excited about the project at first, started to back out last minute fearing government retribution was a strong possibility.  I was heartbroken, but by now I was more convinced than ever that this story had to be told; so I gathered a small team of filmmakers and, armed with high hopes and a thirst for good material, marched into the unknown.

 

Back in Caracas an agreement was finally reached – we were to meet the general at a safe house ensconced in the hills of the city of Caracas; a place he felt safe in… a place he knew well. I drove for what seemed like an eternity until my team and I finally found it – it was a white stucco house covered in Ivy and set back about fifty feet from the curvy front street.

 

I looked around and my heart started pounding; it was four o’clock in the afternoon and the neighborhood was a ghost town. The house itself seemed no different as it appeared empty from a distance. We were a crew of three and all stayed inside the car waiting for a sign to know it was okay to enter the premises; but the sign never came. The wait was long and we began wondering whether the meet was such a good idea; we had heard the general was a wanted man and that the incriminating info he had in his possession was the reason some of Chavez’ goons were looking for him.

 

But either way I’d come too far to drive away and not get what we‘d come for; so I walked out of the car and toward the safe house until something in my gut told me to stop; the realization that this was probably more dangerous than previously thought began to hit me – what if we’re being watched? What if our call was intercepted and the general was already being held prisoner? What if they were just waiting for us to go in to capture us as well? Anything was possible… and if the info we were told the general had on him was even remotely accurate, we could be in trouble with factions way more dangerous than that of Chavez’. We were now talking about terrorists.

 

I was about to turn back when I spotted movement inside and through the bars of a window on the third floor – it was the silhouette of a man nodding at me. A short and slender man who, after disappearing for a few long seconds, came out the front door; it was general Ferreira – he was wearing his uniform, carrying a .45 in a holster and holding a sawed-off shotgun on his right hand. He looked like a man on the run.

 

Once inside the general opened up his laptop – the screen quickly filled with official Venezuelan documents and lists of dangerous individuals whose identities had been laundered by high-ranking government operatives; individuals with multiple international arrest warrants now cooling off in Venezuela under the protection of Chavez’ aides. As head of the country’s Immigration Department, the general had personally been requested to do the same for a few Colombian and Spanish members of high profile terrorist organizations such as the FARC and ETA; but the kicker for us was how many Syrians and other Arab nationals with ties to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah were seeking this type of protection – these were now in the thousands. Ferreira even went on to cite a few specific cases where these known radicals, of now “Venezuelan nationality”, had already partaken in international terrorist plots; one case in particular caught my attention – his name was Mohammed Ali Diab Fattah.

 

The case of Diab Fattah, now well documented, was completely unknown to the world back in 2002; but not to General Ferreira who, personally contacted by the U.S. State Department, was asked to pick him up at Maiquetia’s International Airport on March 8, 2002 – his mission, to interrogate and detain him until further notice – but he failed… upon entering the aircraft to pick FATTAH up, he realized that the prisoner had been quickly deplaned onto the tarmac through the rear of the aircraft and driven away by a group of DISIP OFFICERS (political police). Clearly, FATTAH was no ordinary deportee.

 

And he wasn’t – FATTAH was in fact arrested in Milwaukee for carrying multiple DIEX-issued Venezuelan passports and expired U.S. visas, but also for his direct links to the horrible events of September 11, 2001 – confirmed to have taken flying lessons with Mr. HANI HANJOUR, DIAB FATTAH became the tip of the iceberg and the trigger of a much deeper investigation.

 

For more on “Guerrilla Filmmaking – A True Story”, and the hunt for DIAB FATTAH, come back to storyrocket.com.

See you then,

 

Have a great week,