Venezeulan maverick released from prison
Opposition leader under house arrest
CARACAS, Venezuela — Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was released from prison and placed under house arrest Saturday after more than three years in military lockup, a shock reversal that fuelled hopes for a broader amnesty for dozens of jailed activists as the country slides ever deeper into political turmoil.
Venezuela’s government stacked Supreme Court said in a statement that it had granted Lopez the “humanitarian measures” for health reasons and “serious signs of irregularities” in the handling of the case that it did not specify.
Outside Lopez’s house in the capital, Caracas, a few dozen supporters arrived carrying Venezuelan flags to celebrate along with journalists looking for information about whether the transfer might have been part of a larger deal between the opposition and President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
That speculation was sparked in part by a government truth commission statement saying that, as part of its work to defuse tensions, it had asked the judicial system to evaluate applying “alternative formulas” for those imprisoned for violent acts.
The opposition has been demanding the release of dozens of activists it considers political prisoners in order to initiate talks aimed at resolving a political crisis that has left more than 90 people dead and hundreds injured.
But Lopez, the most prominent and defiant of those behind bars, was seen as the last person likely to leave jail in the event of any government concessions.
The 46-year-old former Caracas-area mayor was sentenced in 2015 to nearly 14 years in prison for inciting violence during antigovernment protests in which three people died and dozens were wounded.
“We spoke for like 40 minutes. He’s hugging his children, he’s with his wife. … I’m sure they are celebrating,” Lopez’s father, who shares his son’s name, said from exile in Spain.
He said Lopez had been isolated in his prison cell without food and attributed his son’s transfer to the considerable international pressure on Maduro’s government. “He told me himself recently: “Dad, it’s always darkest right before the break of dawn,’ ” he added.
Venezuela has been rocked by months of protests again, fuelled by widespread discontent over shortages of basic goods, galloping inflation and allegations that Maduro is undermining democracy in the country.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy broke the news of Lopez’s pre-dawn transfer in a message posted on Twitter, later adding that he had been informed by his predecessor, Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero, who, he said, played a role in the breakthrough. Zapatero has been travelling back and forth to Venezuela for months trying to broker a deal on jailed opposition leaders.
Foreign governments and human rights groups have long criticized Lopez’s detention as politically motivated, and one of the prosecutors on the case who later sought asylum in the United States said that he was ordered by the government to arrest Lopez despite a lack of evidence.