During a meeting with political activists in Caracas on Thursday, Chavez reproached CNN’s Patricia Janiot for an interview with terrorist Raul Diaz, a fugitive from the Venezuelan justice.

The head of state added that Janiot asked him through Twitter to replyto his request directly.

“I challenge you to interview one of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States. The issue is not with me, Mrs Patricia; it’s with the dignity of a people,” he noted.

Although Diaz was sentenced in Venezuela to nine years for planting bombs in the Spanish and Colombian embassies in 2003, Janiot did not introduced him as a terrorist but as a student seeking refuge in the United States.

Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez —internationally known as the Cuban Five— were arrested and given harsh and unjust sentences for monitoring anti-Cuba extreme right-wing groups in South Florida that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against the island.