Venezuelan opposition leaders have demanded the release of the mayor of Caracas following his arrest on accusations of plotting violence against president Nicolas Maduro's government.
The socialist president said Antonio Ledezma’s detention on Thursday night was part of efforts to stop a US-backed coup. Opponents have said the president’s claims are a smokescreen to distract from Venezuela’s economic crisis.
Intelligence agents took the 59-year-old mayor from his office on Thursday and are holding him at their Helicoide headquarters while a judge decides if he will be charged.
“He’s in good spirits and very optimistic of demonstrating he has no links with any wrongdoing,” his lawyer Omar Estacio said, after a brief visit to Mr Ledezma.
Mr Ledezma is the highest-profile opponent of Mr Maduro in custody after fellow opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested a year ago for his role in street protests that led to four months of violence and the deaths of 43 Venezuelans.
Dubbed “The Vampire” by Maduro supporters, the mayor allied himself with opposition radicals last year in supporting the street campaign, dubbed “La Salida”, or, “The Exit”.
‘Attempted coup’
Mr Maduro said the 2014 violence was an attempted coup against his socialist government, and officials said last week Mr Ledezma was among various politicians supporting a new plot with dissident military officers to topple the president via air strikes.
“Every fascist gets found out,” Mr Maduro said late on Thursday, announcing the detention to applause from supporters.
The main evidence shown by officials was a public document signed by Mr Ledezma and two other opposition leaders urging a political transition, which officials call a roadmap for a coup but opponents term a political strategy paper.
In a statement, the public prosecutor’s office said Mr Ledezma would be formally accused of “presumed involvement in conspiratorial acts to organise and carry out violent acts against the democratically constituted government”.
Opposition demonstration
Opposition leaders, who gathered in a Caracas square today with several hundred supporters, said Mr Maduro was trying to make Venezuelans forget the economic recession, the highest inflation rate in the Americas and widespread scarcities.
Mr Maduro (52), a former union activist, bus driver and long-serving foreign minister, has seen his popularity plummet since he narrowly won an election in 2013 to replace Hugo Chávez.
“They’re trying to distract us,” said pro-Ledezma demonstrator and lawyer Rosibel Torres, waving a Venezuelan flag with “Freedom” written on it. “We’re entering a stage of brutal repression. We’re openly in dictatorship.”
Although opposition leaders lampoon Mr Maduro’s coup allegations, there is a history of plotting against Venezuela’s socialist governments, including a brief 2002 coup against Chávez.
Some radical activists acknowledge the existence of an underground movement aimed at toppling Mr Maduro. A recently-detained student radical, Lorent Saleh, surfaced in a government video praising Mr Ledezma as "an old fox . . . the politician who has most supported the resistance".
The public prosecutor’s statement mentioned Mr Ledezma’s “links with the case of Lorent Saleh”, as well as with other activists in jail accused of planning attacks.
Mr Ledezma’s arrest touched off some isolated protests in Caracas on Thursday night and brought renewed violence in the volatile western city of San Cristobal, witnesses said.
Masked youths reportedly threw stones at the governor’s residence in San Cristobal and several dozen faced off with security forces.
The US, which recently slapped sanctions on some Venezuela officials, again denied trying to destabilise the South American Opec nation.
“Deeply concerned by what appears to be escalation of intimidation of opponents by government of Venezuela,” assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs Roberta Jacobson said via Twitter today.
Reuters