Venezuela seizes 2 foes
Opposition leaders sent back to prison after criticizing government.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Two of Venezuela’s leading opposition figures were seized at their homes by state security agents early Tuesday in the first moves by President Nicolas Maduro’s government against prominent enemies since a widely denounced vote granting the ruling party nearly unlimited powers.
Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma were being held at the Ramo Verde military prison south of the capital, accused by the governmentallied Supreme Court of violating the terms of their house arrest by plotting to escape and releasing video statements criticizing Maduro.
Relatives and allies of Lopez and Ledezma, a former Caracas mayor, earlier reported on social media that both had been detained. Lopez’s wife posted what appeared to be video of him being taken from their home after midnight.
“They’ve just taken Leopoldo from the house,” Lilian Tintori tweeted. “We don’t know where he is or where they’re taking him.”
Allies of Ledezma posted video of a man who appeared to be the opposition leader being taken by state security as a woman screams for help.
“They’re taking Ledezma!” she cries. “It’s a dictatorship!”
Attorney Juan Carlos Gutierrez said the government’s decision to return Lopez to prison was “completely arbitrary” and that Lopez had obeyed the conditions imposed on his house arrest and had never planned to flee.
Lopez had been released from the Ramo Verde prison July 8 after serving three years of a 13- year sentence for inciting violence at opposition rallies. Many human- rights groups considered him a political prisoner.
Ledezma was detained in 2015 and has been under house arrest. Both leaders recently posted videos online denouncing Maduro’s decision to hold a vote for a constitutional assembly with the power to overhaul Venezuela’s political system.
The White House issued a statement Tuesday condemning “the Maduro dictatorship” over the arrests and saying Lopez and Ledezma are political prisoners.
It added that it holds Maduro “personally responsible” for the health and safety of the two prisoners.
The two were being “unjustly” held by the Venezuelan government after its “outrageous seizure of power through a sham election” over the weekend, said White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Maduro said Monday evening that he had no intention of deviating from his plans to rewrite the constitution and go after his enemies, including independent Venezuelan news channels and gunmen he claimed were sent by neighboring Colombia to disrupt the vote as part of an international conspiracy led by the man he calls “Emperor Donald Trump.”
“They don’t intimidate me. The threats and sanctions of the empire don’t intimidate me for a moment,” Maduro said on national TV. “I don’t listen to orders from the empire, not now or ever. … Bring on more sanctions, Donald Trump.”
Hours earlier, Washington had added Maduro to a steadily growing list of high- ranking Venezuelan officials targeted by financial sanctions, escalating a tactic that has so far failed to alter his socialist government’s behavior. For now, the Trump administration has not delivered on threats to sanction Venezuela’s oil industry, which could undermine Maduro’s government but raise U. S. gas prices and deepen the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
The sanctions came after electoral authorities said more than 8 million people voted Sunday on delegates for the constitutional assembly — a turnout doubted by independent analysts while the election was labeled illegitimate by leaders across the Americas and Europe.
On Tuesday, Panamanian and Argentine officials and the Organization of American States condemned the arrests, though other nations in the region were silent.
A spokesman for U. N. SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said he “has taken note” of the imprisonments and was sending “an overall message of concern for the increase in political tensions and the country moving away from a path to finding a peaceful solution.”
The French, British, Spanish and Mexican ambassadors to Venezuela visited the oppositioncontrolled National Assembly on Tuesday and met with legislators as a show of support. After they left, members of pro- government motorcycle gangs surrounded the building and some threw rocks and tomatoes at a legislator and another person as they left the building. Three legislators said they were breaking with the pro- government Great Patriotic Pole party and forming a new faction opposed to rewriting the constitution.
Venezuela’s vice president, whom the U. S. has accused of drug trafficking, said late Tuesday that the constituent assembly would convene “within hours.” Maduro has said the new assembly will begin to govern within a week.
The constituent assembly faced with rewriting the country’s constitution will have powers above and beyond other state institutions, including the opposition- controlled Congress.
Among other measures, Maduro said he would use the assembly’s powers to bar opposition candidates from running in gubernatorial elections in December unless they sit with his party to negotiate an end to hostilities that have generated four months of protests that have killed at least 120 people and wounded nearly 2,000.
Maduro called the vote for the constitutional assembly in May after a month of protests against his government, which has overseen Venezuela’s descent into a devastating crisis during its four years in power.
Because of plunging oil prices and widespread corruption and mismanagement, Venezuela’s inflation and homicide rates are among the world’s highest, and widespread shortages of food and medicine have citizens dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through trash for food.