The Hamilton Spectator

Venezuelan congress leader briefly detained

- FABIOLA SANCHEZ AND JOSHUA GOODMAN

CARACAS, VENEZUELA —

The new head of Venezuela’s increasing­ly defiant congress was pulled from his vehicle and briefly detained by police Sunday, a day after the U.S. backed him assuming the presidency as a way out of the country’s deepening crisis.

The confusing incident, which drew swift internatio­nal condemnati­on, is bound to ramp up tensions between the opposition and government following President Nicolas Maduro’s swearing in for a controvers­ial second term this month.

A video circulatin­g on social media purports to show the moment in which Juan Guaido is intercepte­d on his way to an anti-government town hall meeting in the port city of La Guaira.

In the video shot on a cellphone by a motorist, several men in ski masks and carrying assault weapons are seen struggling to shut the door on someone being pushed into an SUV before racing down a highway.

While it was not possible to identify Guaido in the 33-second video, his wife, Fabiana Rosales, said on Twitter that he had been detained by a commando unit of the feared SEBIN intelligen­ce police. As news of his detention spread, he was then released.

“We are going to fulfil our constituti­onal duties,” Guaido said to a group of cheering supporters at the rally. “We are survivors — not victims, and we are going to move this country forward.”

Adding to the confusion, the government tried to shift the blame to Guaido’s allies, with Communicat­ions Minister Jorge Rodriguez saying that the “media show” had perhaps been orchestrat­ed to provoke an uproar.

Still, he acknowledg­ed that police officers had partook in the arrest and said they would be discipline­d.

“We want to inform the people of Venezuela that the officials who took that upon themselves are being dismissed,” Rodriguez said on state TV.

A coalition of 13 Latin American countries and Canada condemned Guaido’s “arbitrary” detention targeting the head of the National Assembly. In a statement, the Lima Group rejected any “pressure or coercion that prevents the full and normal exercise of their powers as an organ constituti­onally and legitimate­ly elected in Venezuela.”

At the rally Sunday after the incident, Guaido told The Associated Press that the SEBIN agents informed him they were carrying out orders from above when they arrested him.

“They tried to put me in handcuffs,” he told the crowd of a few hundred waving Venezuelan flags. “But I didn’t let them because I’m president of the National Assembly.”

Guaido has been leading an increasing­ly tense standoff with Maduro seeking to oust the socialist from power, winning the support of some powerful internatio­nal allies like U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke to him by phone shortly after the 35-year-old assumed the presidency of the opposition­controlled National Assembly.

At a rally Friday he said he was prepared to take over as Venezuela’s interim president and call for new elections, a move the U.S. and regional government­s support.

But for such a strategy to succeed, he said Venezuelan­s must take to the streets to express their discontent with Maduro’s handling of what was once Latin America’s wealthiest nation. To that end, he called for nationwide demonstrat­ions on Jan. 23 to coincide with the anniversar­y of the 1958 ousting of military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.

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