Venezuela’s opposition has announced that one of its leaders was abducted only hours after being released from detention.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado said that her political ally Juan Pablo Guanipa was seized shortly after his release.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate said on Sunday that Guanipa, the leader of the Justice First (Primero Justicia) party, was forcibly taken in the Los Chorros neighborhood of the capital, Caracas.
“Heavily armed men, dressed in civilian clothes, arrived in four vehicles and took him by force,” she wrote on social media in the early hours of Monday.
His center-right party said Guanipa was abducted by the “repressive forces of the dictatorship” while he was moving from one location to another.
According to the party, people accompanying him said they were threatened with firearms before Guanipa was forced into a vehicle.
“We hold Delcy Rodríguez, Jorge Rodríguez, and Diosdado Cabello responsible for any harm that may come to Juan Pablo’s life,” Justice First wrote on social media, referring to Venezuela’s vice president, the president of the National Assembly, and the interior minister.
The party also called on the international community to demand Guanipa’s immediate release and an end to the persecution of the opposition by the Venezuelan government.
Just hours earlier, Guanipa’s son, Ramón, had celebrated his father’s release on social media.
