CARACAS – Venezuela’s Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado said on Monday that armed men “kidnapped” a close ally shortly after his release by authorities, following ex-leader Nicolas Maduro’s capture.
The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed later that same day that former National Assembly vice president Juan Pablo Guanipa, 61, was again taken into custody and to be put under house arrest, arguing that he violated the conditions of his release.
Guanipa would be placed under house arrest “in order to safeguard the criminal process,” the office said in a statement on Monday. The conditions of Guanipa’s release have yet to be made public.
Machado claimed that her close ally had been “kidnapped” in the capital Caracas by armed men “dressed in civilian clothes” who took him away by force.
“We demand his immediate release,” she wrote on social media platform X.
The arrest came after his release from prison on Sunday along with two other opposition figures, and as lawmakers prepared to vote Tuesday on a historic amnesty law covering charges used to lock up dissidents in almost three decades of socialist rule.
Shortly after his release, Guanipa visited several detention centers in Caracas, where he met with relatives of political prisoners and spoke to the press.
Guanipa had appeared earlier Sunday in a video posted on his X account, showing what looked like his release papers.
“Here we are, being released,” Guanipa said in the video, adding that he had spent “10 months in hiding, almost nine months detained here” in Caracas.
Speaking to AFP later on Sunday, he had called on the government to respect the 2024 presidential election, which opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was widely considered to have won. Maduro claimed victory and remained in power till January.
