Politician arrested – hours after being released

TT

Updated 07.44 | Published 04.23

 

Opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa as he met the press after his release. Photo: Cristian Hernandez/AP/TT

Just hours after his release, Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa has been arrested, prosecutors in Caracas confirm.

Nobel laureate María Corina Machado demands his release.

Juan Pablo Guanipa has been “kidnapped” in the capital Caracas, opposition leader María Corina Machado said on X early Monday, Swedish time.

“Heavily armed men in civilian clothes arrived in four vehicles and took him away by force. We demand his immediate release,” she writes.

Shortly afterwards, the country's prosecutor's office confirmed that Guanipa had been arrested and claimed that he had violated the terms of his release. It is unclear what those terms were.

Guanipa, 61, who is a former vice president of Venezuela's parliament, was released on Sunday along with two other prominent opposition politicians – Perkins Rocha, former legal advisor to María Corina Machado, and Freddy Superlano, who won a gubernatorial election in former leader Hugo Chávez's birthplace of Barinas.

The release came shortly before Venezuela's parliament is set to vote on a new amnesty law in the country on Tuesday. If passed, the law would, according to a draft previously seen by AFP, lift the ban on several prominent opposition politicians from running for political office.

The proposal, presented by interim president Delcy Rodríguez, was given the green light in a first vote last week.

At the end of January, 80 political prisoners were released in the country, barely a month after the US capture of former President Nicolás Maduro.