Reason for AP anonymity

[azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)]

Astrologer released after predicting death of Venezuela president

By Vivian Sequera
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARACAS, Venezuela - An astrologer who predicted 80 year-old President
Rafael Caldera's "death" next year was released by political police
Thursday after two days of questioning in detention.

Jose Bernardo Gomez, 47, said he was detained "because I spoke about the
possibility of the death of President Caldera."

The widely feared Department of Intelligence and Prevention Services wanted
to know where Gomez At his information, he said, and whether he was
connected to leftist political groups.

Caldera's astrological chart ,show that "Uranus is over the sun, Pluto is
in ascendancy and Mars is going behind its moon" - not a good sign for the
president, Gomez told police.

"I've been sustaining the possibility of the death of the president of the
republic for a long time," Gomez said, adding that the word "death" is
"symbolic language that could be physical or something of another order."

The arrest of the rotund, boarded and jovial 47-year

old philosophy professor at Venezuela Central University was treated as
front-page news by the mainstream daily newspaper El Nacional and other
media.

Government officials, perhaps a little embarrassed, played down the incident.

"He's not accused of anything," Interior Minister Jose Guillermo Andueza
said tersely. Political police merely wanted to know "what basis he has for
making this kind of statement."

Gomez, an academic with postgraduate degrees in history, education,
psychology and philosophy from three Venezuela universities, said he meant
Caldera no wrong and, in fact, voted for Caldera for his first term in
1968.

"I wish the president good health. I'm not betting on his sicknesses, much
less on his death," Gomez said in an interview in his home two hours after
his release. "It's just that from an astrological point of view, 1997 looks
dark for Caldera."

Gomez spoke publicly on the topic at a conference of businessmen on Oct. 12.