Venezuela’s attorney general seeks the arrest of the opposition leader | Nicolas Maduro News

The Venezuelan government has asked the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol, to seek the arrest of an opposition figure abroad.

Attorney General Tarek Saab announced Monday that his office has requested an arrest warrant Leopold Lopezformer mayor and leader of the Voluntad Popular political party.

Lopez lives in exile, having fled in 2020 for Spain after spending six years in prison and under house arrest.

Saab’s call for his arrest comes after Lopez posted on social media in support of recent comments made by the former Colombian president. Alvaro Uribe.

Uribe, a right-wing president who served from 2002 to 2010, held a press conference on Saturday at the Colombian border with Venezuela, where he pushed the international community to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“We call for international intervention, preferably supported by the United Nations, to remove these tyrants from power and call free elections immediately,” Uribe said from the border city of Cucuta.

Lopez responded to a video clip of Uribe’s speech on the X social networking platform that day itself.

He cited July’s disputed presidential election as an indication that the opposition has exhausted all its options to oust Maduro.

“After trying ALL paths, including winning an election with 70% of the vote, we will seriously consider this proposal,” Lopez wrote. “I dare say that most Venezuelans agree.”

The elections increase the tension

Oath to a third term of six years On Friday, Maduro, a former bus driver, succeeded his political mentor Hugo Chavez as president in 2013.

His administration has long been accused of human rights abuses, including the arbitrary detention and torture of perceived political rivals.

Review of that human rights record was raised during the 2024 elections, when the main candidates they were barred from the race and the results were criticized for a lack of transparency.

The national electoral authority announced Maduro’s victory within hours of the polls closing, without providing the usual distribution of votes, raising suspicions.

In response, the opposition released copies of what it said were official ballot papers, showing its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalezwinning by a wide margin.

Gonzalez himself has since went into exileafter a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest in September. Before Maduro’s inauguration, he returned to the Americas to visit countries that supported his bid for the presidency, including Argentina and the United States.

Maduro has long accused foreign powers of seeking to undermine his authority, and he often unleashed protests against his government as the result of foreign conspiracies.

“The gringos are behind this plan,” Maduro said in a televised address after protests broke out in the wake of the latest presidential race.

Ultimately, the government estimates that 2,000 people have been arrested in the post-election crackdown, and human rights groups say 25 people have been killed.

The United States has since he increased his wealth for information that could lead to the arrest of Maduro, from $15m to $25m. Is it recognize Gonzalez as the rightful winner of the 2024 election.

Maduro, meanwhile, announced that his government had arrested foreign “mercenaries” last week, including Colombian and American citizens.

A controversial arrest

Lopez, the leader of Voluntad Popular, was initially arrested under Maduro in February 2014.

The government charged him with a range of crimes, including public incitement and conspiracy to commit arson, although some of the more extreme charges – including “terrorism” – were later dropped.

He was eventually sentenced to more than 13 years in prison. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the process as likely “politically motivated”, and a United Nations working group on arbitrary detention called for the release of Lopez.

In 2017, Lopez was transferred from Ramo Verde prison to house arrest, and in 2020, fled to Spain.

In announcing the new charges on Monday, Attorney General Saab told Venezuelan state television that he would seek to re-arrest Lopez for instigating the use of weapons against the state, treason, conspiracy and criminal association.