Small Plane Crashes in Venezuela, Carrying Witnesses to the Zapatero Case

Small plane crashes in Venezuela with witnesses to the Zapatero case

A crash that doesn't kill anyone, when read through a conspiratorial lens, is perhaps the worst possible evidence. The two occupants of the small plane that crashed in Venezuela survived with injuries and some burns. They are alive.
That detail—uncomfortable for any assassination plot—is currently the only thing that holds up to anything resembling a fact.

What is known about the crash and who is publishing it

The aircraft crashed a couple of days before the controversy erupted. Aboard were two individuals presented as key witnesses in the so-called Zapatero case, a catch-all affair involving jewels, gold, oil, and the former president's relationship with Chavismo. The news was disseminated by a digital media outlet, not an aeronautical authority. As of this discussion, there is no official report on the causes of the crash or any judicial resolution attributing it to an intentional act.

Coincidence as an argument and its flaws

Coincidence has become a kind of evidence. Some enumerate episodes—money, gold, contracts, crashes—and conclude that repetition is enough to close the case. Against this weighs an elemental problem: if someone wanted to eliminate two witnesses, doing so with an accident that leaves them alive and burned would be a textbook operational failure. Operations attributed to organized crime are supposed to possess greater efficiency. Here, two witnesses survived.

A file dubbed 'Royuela' enters the conversation without any known judicial procedure. To suspect is free. To impute, not: none of the circulating accusations have public evidentiary support.

With these points, the question is not who did it, but how many accidents are needed for a coincidence to stop being one.