ROGUE chopper cop Oscar Perez and his gang were plotting further mayhem when police gunned him down, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said last night.

Mr Maduro said: “We are informed that they had prepared a car bomb to detonate in front of an embassy.”

He also accused the embassy of neighbouring Colombia of promising the fugitives asylum “after they had placed the bomb.”

“It is from Colombia that they are financed,” he said, naming former Colombian presidents Alvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana. “These creatures want to fill our country with violence. They will not.”

Mr Perez, who hijacked a police helicopter to drop grenades on the Supreme Court and Interior Ministry buildings in the capital Caracas in June, was with four accomplices when the police raid took place. Police found assault rifles, a sniper rifle, ammunition, mobile phones and passports.

Unofficial police sources said late last night that Mr Perez’s body had been taken to the Bello Monte morgue at about 3pm, but there was no official notification that the fugitive had been killed.

Two police officers — named as Chief Superintendent Andreu Garate and Officer Gonzalez Roger — were killed and five injured in the assault on the terrorist hideout in the capital’s El Junquito suburb.

Urban Agriculture Minister Freddy Bernal said a leader of the pro-government Three Roots collective, Heiker Vazquez, was also killed in the raid.

“Today a group of patriots fell in combat, including Heiker, as revolutionaries fall,” Mr Bernal said. “The same goes for Hansel Davila and the other compatriots who were injured under enemy fire. Thus is war.”