Published at: 26/08/2026 09:00 PM

THE HALVORSSEN, HELMEYER AND LÓPEZ SISCO BOMBS

(Zeta, El Nacional, 2001 and El Mundo, July, August and November 1993; El Universal and Venezuela News, February 2, 2026)

• On August 18, 1993, 33 years ago, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot of the Ciudad Tamanaco Shopping Center (CCCT). The sound was heard miles away, leaving three people seriously injured. The CCCT's security and surveillance systems were the brothers Luis and Ricardo Köesling.
• Between July and November of that year, a wave of explosions hit Caracas, designed to sow panic among the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice and in turn provoke a stock market stampede to plummet the stock market indices of the Caracas Stock Exchange.
• The mastermind and financier of the car bomb was Thor Halvorssen Hellum, executive of the Caracas Stock Exchange, former president of the Venezuelan Anonymous Telephone Company (CANTV), agent in charge of telephone espionage and anti-drug czar of the disastrous government of Carlos Andrés Pérez II.
• But there is no perfect crime: Why cause a state of general anxiety? Who could be interested in or favored by acts of urban terrorism? What files and judgments were in the hands of the magistrates of the highest court of the Republic? Stock market terrorism in Venezuela? For what? Who? Something unprecedented.
• The master plan, although masterfully orchestrated by experienced explosive technicians, some expert in stock market scams and financial assassins, left enough traces to identify and reveal the masterminds behind this macabre conspiracy.
• On October 18, after carrying out the relevant investigations and investigations, the Venezuelan scientific police, led by criminologist Orlando Jordán Petit, Commissioner of the Technical Judicial Police (PTJ), succeeded in identifying as intellectual and material authors of the terrorist act a group of “yuppies” plugged into the upper echelons of the Caracas aristocracy and the government; namely:
  • Thor Halvorssen Hellum
  • Ramiro Helmeyer
  • Ibrahim José Sosa Velutini
  • Álvaro Campins Camejo
  • Walter Alexander del Nogal
  • José Mancera
  • Freddy Gamboa
  • José G. Hernández Villegas

• A month earlier, on July 19, an envelope containing C4 plastic explosive had exploded in the Secretariat of the Full Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. The archivist, Hugo Betancourt Zerpa, 29, lost half an arm when he opened it.
• Halvorssen (father), was identified by police sources as the coordinating and financial brain of the conspiracy, in complicity with Henry López Sisco, General Commissioner of the General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention (DISIP).
• A few days earlier, judges Alirio Abreu Burelli and Gonzalo Rodríguez Corro received envelopes containing C4 explosives in their homes. Abreu Burelli, who had previously been the subject of telephone threats with the message “we are going to blow them up”, decided not to open it and warned. The envelopes were removed and detonated remotely by DISIP explosives.
• The bomb envelopes were sent from an AEROCAV agency located in Los Teques, edo. Miranda, by an employee named Pedro Carmona with mobilization guide No. SR-205439.
• On Wednesday, July 28, a C-4 device exploded in the ventilation ducts of the gasoline container tanks at the Ávila Service Station, located in the city. Altamira. The attempt to explode the thousands of liters of fuel in the containers to cause panic in the city failed.
• Another bomb that paralyzed all of Caracas was the one placed at the headquarters of the Federation of Chambers and Associations of Commerce of Venezuela (FEDECÁMARAS), causing only material damage.
• Finally, on Saturday, November 6, a nipple exploded in the Full Chola parking lot, in front of Parque Central, leaving the security guard Cipriano Guzmán Graziani dead and the user Serafín Rivera without a leg.
• Journalists Jurate Rosales and Hindu Anderi were also the target of these terrorist attacks in an attempt to silence their complaints. Fortunately, the physical integrity of these two communicators was not affected.
• Once again, distinguished surnames of the Caracas bourgeoisie stained their hands with the blood of innocent lives, covering the red pages of all Venezuelan newspapers with horror news.
• Halvorssen Hellum, his partner Ramiro Hellmeyer, Ibrahim Velutini Sosa and Andrés Rodríguez Ghersy, were arrested and brought to justice.
• Other detainees were:
  • Álvaro Campins Camejo
  • Gustavo J. Mancera, lawyer and advisor to former president Herrera Campins
  • Alan Torres Oliver
  • Andrés Manuel Rodríguez
  • Danilo Díaz Granados
  • In the interior of the country, Carlos Freddy Gamboa, another of those mentioned by Hellmeyer in his confession, surrendered.

• During Halvorssen's 74 days in prison, his son launched a global campaign for his release. Prestigious organizations, such as Amnesty International, the International Society for Human Rights and the Helsinki Committee, came together to exert pressure on the government of Ramón J. Velásquez, and was acquitted of charges, not of responsibility.
• Hellmeyer was sentenced to the maximum penalty for the murder of the mobster Mario Patti, whom, due to a reckoning, he threw into the void from his private plane a 20-minute flight from La Tortuga Island, in shark-infected waters.
• Ricardo Köesling, Chief of Security of the CCCT in 1993, would star in the April 2002 assault on the Cuban Embassy together with Henrique Capriles, Cristóbal Romero Iribarren, Salvador Romaní and others.
• Coincidentally, Halvorssen Hellum, uncle of Leopoldo López Mendoza, is the father of Halvorssen Mendoza, director of the famous Human Rights Foundation based in Oslo, Norway. Recently, Halvorssen Mendoza has been mentioned 1,500 times in declassified files as a regular assistant to the orgies of pedophiles with minors that Jeffrey Epstein organized on his private island (El Universal, February 2, 2026).

Mazo News Team