Leaders of Venezuela opposition are thrown back in jail by Maduro
Venezuela’s intelligence service took two opposition leaders back to prison yesterday, authorities said, as president Nicolas Maduro moved to shore up his power after an election denounced by his critics as a sham.
The action came the day before an assembly elected on Sunday takes office, superseding the opposition-controlled legislature.
The supreme court said Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma were sent back to prison because they had violated the terms of their house arrest by making political statements.
It said authorities acted with urgency because they had received intelligence that the pair “had a plan to flee”.
The move was criticised as a “step in the wrong direction” by both the United States and the European Union.
The men are two of Venezuela’s most high-profile opposition leaders. Both had called for a boycott of Sunday’s vote for an all-powerful “constituent assembly” tasked with rewriting the constitution.
They were detained by the intelligence service known by its acronym Sebin, the wife of Mr Lopez and children of Mr Ledezma said.
Both of their families said they held Mr Maduro, the driving force behind the vote, responsible for the opposition leaders’ lives.
“They just took Leopoldo away. We do not know where he is or where they are taking him,” Mr Lopez’s wife Lilian Tintori said on Twitter.
She released home security camera footage in which four uniformed police officers and three others in civilian garb are seen putting her husband into a car and taking off.
Opposition leaders and media posted cellphone footage of Mr Ledezma in pajamas being taken from his home by force.
“We keep calling the government of Venezuela to work towards urgent confidence-building measures aimed at de-escalating the tensions and fostering better conditions for resuming efforts towards a peaceful negotiated solution,” said Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini.
In Washington, the senior US diplomat for the Americas, acting assistant secretary Antonio Francisco Palmieri, tweeted that the detentions were “further evidence of the Maduro regime’s authoritarianism”.
Mr Lopez, 46, was transferred to house arrest last month after serving three years and five months in prison as part of a 14-year term. He had been convicted of instigating violence during protests against Mr Maduro in 2014 which resulted in the deaths of 43 people dead.
Mr Ledezma, 62, was arrested in February 2015 on charges of conspiracy and racketeering and was placed under house arrest three months later for health reasons.
Opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said the arrests were aimed at “frightening us and demoralising us”.
Four months of street demonstrations since April against Mr Maduro have left 120 people dead, including 10 over the weekend that included the election.
The opposition said Sunday’s vote was a fraudulent ploy by Mr Maduro to cling to power because, it argued, he is so unpopular he could not win an election. The next is scheduled for 2018.
The new constituent assembly is to start work today. It is made up only of members of Mr Maduro’s Socialist party and includes his wife. The opposition has called a rally to coincide with the gathering.
The United States imposed direct sanctions on Mr Maduro on Monday, calling him a “dictator.” The Venezuelan leader retorted that he would not heed what he called “imperial orders.”
The measures were unusual in that they targeted a sitting head of state, but their reach was mostly symbolic, freezing any US assets Mr Maduro might have and banning people under US jurisdiction from dealing with him.
Colombia, Mexico, Peru and other nations joined the US in saying they did not recognise the results of Sunday’s election.
Mr Maduro’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega – who broke with him months ago over his policies – also said she would not acknowledge the body, calling it part of the president’s “dictatorial ambition.”
However, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Russia stood by Mr Maduro, who shrugged off mass protests and an earlier round of US sanctions on some of his officials to see through the election.
Mr Maduro’s move to send opponents back to prison from house arrest were condemned by the US and the EU