Venezuelan prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.
Caracas:
A Venezuelan court on Monday issued an arrest warrant for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who claims he legitimately won the July election that authorities awarded to incumbent President Nicolas Maduro.
The court, the prosecutor’s office said on Instagram, granted its request for an arrest warrant against Gonzalez Urrutia for “serious crimes.”
The office had earlier posted its request to the court on social media, in which it listed alleged crimes stemming from the opposition’s insistence that Maduro and his allies stole the July 28 presidential vote.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), most of whose members support Maduro, 61, declared him re-elected for a third six-year term – a result contested by the opposition and much of the international community.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize the result without seeing detailed results of the vote.
The CNE said it could not release the files because hackers had corrupted the data, although observers said there was no evidence of this.
Gonzalez Urrutia, a retired diplomat who replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the last minute, has been in hiding since shortly after the election.
Maduro has called for his imprisonment along with that of Machado, who Venezuelan institutions have barred from running in the elections on charges widely described as false.
She too has lived largely in hiding since the vote, although she has led several organized protests against Maduro.
The opposition released its own voting results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia won the election with a landslide majority.
This is the source of the accusations brought against him, among which are “usurpation” of public functions, “falsification” of public documents, incitement to disobedience, sabotage and “association” with organized crime and the financing of “terrorism.”
– ‘Sabotage‘ –
Gonzalez Urrutia has ignored three summonses to appear before prosecutors investigating him, prompting Maduro to call the opponent a “coward” who was “leading a coup in secret.”
Maduro also blamed the opposition for the deaths of 25 civilians and two soldiers during protests that broke out spontaneously after the CNE announced his re-election for a third six-year term.
Nearly 200 people were injured and more than 2,400 arrested.
Since coming to power in 2013, Maduro has presided over an economic collapse that has seen more than seven million Venezuelans flee the country as GDP has fallen by 80% in a decade.
Last week, a power outage left most of Venezuela without electricity for hours, in what the regime called “sabotage” as part of a U.S.-led plot to overthrow the socialist leader.
Maduro has managed to cling to power despite tougher sanctions after his 2018 re-election, which was also branded a sham by dozens of countries.
The United States seized the plane used by Maduro and his entourage on Monday, citing sanctions violations.
U.S. officials picked up the plane in the Dominican Republic and flew it to Florida.
“Maduro and his proxies falsified the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and waged widespread repression to maintain power by force,” a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council said Monday.
The seizure of the plane “is an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences of his misgovernance of Venezuela,” the spokesman added.
Maduro denounced the move as tantamount to “piracy.”
According to a congressional briefing document, Washington has implemented sanctions since 2005 against Venezuelan individuals and entities “that have engaged in criminal, antidemocratic or corrupt actions.”
These sanctions were later expanded under former President Donald Trump “in response to increased human rights abuses and corruption by the government of Nicolas Maduro… to include financial sanctions, sectoral sanctions and sanctions against the government.”
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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