TEN officers of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, including a general, were sentenced by a military court martial for conspiracy and treason this month for their roles in the foiled coup d’etat against President Nicolas Maduro this past February.

“The country has its justice” declared Defence Minister General Vladimir Padrino Lopez after the sentencing.

“Military courts martial sentence eight officials of ‘Operation Jericho’ for incitement to treason and conduct unbecoming of the military.”

Air Force General Oswaldo Hernandez, Majors Cesar Ortiz, Victor Ascanio and Captains Nery Cordoba, Andres Martinez and Leided Salazar were all sentenced to eight years and seven months in prison.

Colonel Jose Delgado and Lieutenant-Colonel Ruperto Sanchez were given seven years and three months, while Capitan Juan Carlos Quintero was sentenced to five years and four months.

Corvette Captain Jose Moreno had already been sentenced to three years and 11 months following his confession on the first day of the trial which started on February 25 in Caracas.

All those sentenced were done so under articles 481 and 565 of the Organic Codes of Military Justice.

Operation Jericho was a conspiracy by right-wing political and military leaders, with funding and orientation from the US State Department, to overthrow Maduro’s Bolivarian government on February 12, exactly one year after terrorist street protests were unleashed across the nation with the same objective.

It has been revealed that the plot included the publication of a “manifesto for a transitional government” in a well-known newspaper, which would have triggered the start of military operations against the government.

Evidence shows that plans included the bombing of the presidential palace with a Toucan fighter jet, as well as attacks on other key strategic sites such as the Defence Ministry, the Caracas mayor’s office, the Central Bank, Telesur TV headquarters, the Foreign Office, the High Supreme Court and the military intelligence offices.

“We have dismantled an attempted coup d’etat against democracy, against the stability of our nation,” said Maduro on February 12 when the officials were arrested by the intelligence forces.

Evidence publicly presented to the country included marked maps, mobile phones, uniforms and plans found on confiscated computers.

Defence Minister Lopez assured the unity and loyalty of the armed forces immediately after the evidence was unveiled.

Opposition politician and Greater Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma has already been tried and sentenced for his role in the attempted coup, while the leader of the terrorist street protests of 2014, Leopoldo Lopez, has been in prison for over a year.

Maduro’s government has frequently denounced the hand of the US State Department in such plots, claims which the US brushes off as “laughable,” but which history shows is more than probable.

“They paid them in dollars, they motivated them, they gave them a mission, they gave them US visas and they told them that if it failed then they could enter the US through their embassy,” said Maduro.