A Venezuelan court on Monday issued an arrest warrant for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who he claims rightfully won July elections that authorities said were rigged for incumbent President Nicolas Maduro.
The prosecutor’s office said on Instagram that the court had accepted its request for a warrant against González Urrutia for “serious crimes.”
The office earlier published on social media its request to the court, listing alleged crimes it said arose from the opposition’s insistence that Maduro and his allies stole the July 28 presidential election.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), most of whose members are friends of 61-year-old Maduro, declared him re-elected to a third six-year term – a move objected to by the opposition and much of the international community.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognise the result without seeing detailed voting results.
The CNE has said it cannot publish the records because hackers corrupted the data, though observers have said there is no evidence of that.
Retired diplomat Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the last minute, has been in hiding since shortly after the election.
Maduro has sought to imprison him and Machado, who were barred by Venezuelan institutions from running on charges that were widely described as fabricated.
She has also been in hiding for most of the time since the vote, though she has led several organized protests against Maduro.
The opposition published election results from its polling station, according to which González Urrutia won by a landslide.
This is the source of the charges against him, which include “takeover” of public works, “forgery” of a public document, incitement to disobedience, sabotage, and “connections” with financiers of organized crime and “terrorism.”
,sabotage,
González Urrutia has ignored three summons to appear before prosecutors investigating him, prompting Maduro to label the opposition leader a “coward” who is “secretly plotting a coup.”
Maduro has also blamed the opposition for the deaths of 25 civilians and two soldiers who were killed in protests that erupted after the CNE announced his re-election to a third six-year term.
About 200 people were injured and over 2,400 were arrested.
Since coming to power in 2013, Maduro has presided over an economic collapse that has forced more than seven million Venezuelans to flee the country, and led to an 80 percent drop in gross domestic product over a decade.
Last week, blackouts left much of Venezuela without power for hours, which the regime said were “sabotage” as part of a US-led plot to oust the socialist leader.
Maduro has managed to remain in power despite sanctions that were stepped up following his re-election in 2018, which dozens of countries described as a sham.
The United States on Monday seized a plane used by Maduro and his associates, citing sanctions violations.
US authorities took possession of the plane in the Dominican Republic and took it to Florida.
“Maduro and his proxies manipulated the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and conducted widespread repression to forcibly maintain power,” a US National Security Council spokesperson said on Monday.
The spokesperson said the seizure of the plane was “an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to face the consequences of his misrule in Venezuela.”
Maduro denounced the move as tantamount to “theft”.
According to a congressional briefing document, Washington has imposed sanctions since 2005 against Venezuelan individuals and entities “that have engaged in criminal, anti-democratic, or corrupt practices.”
These were later expanded under former President Donald Trump “in response to increasing human rights abuses and corruption by the government of Nicolas Maduro… to include financial sanctions, sectoral sanctions, and sanctions on the government.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
