Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran against incumbent Nicolas Maduro in July’s presidential election, says masked men kidnapped his son-in-law in Caracas.
Edmundo Gonzalez, the leader of Venezuela’s political opposition, has accused masked men of kidnapping his son-in-law, who remains missing.
Gonzalez, who ran in the country’s disputed presidential election in July, announced the news on social media on Tuesday.
“This morning my son-in-law Rafael Tudares was kidnapped,” Gonzalez wrote.
“Rafael was on his way to the school of my grandchildren, aged 7 and 6, in Caracas to drop them off at the start of classes and was intercepted by men dressed in black with hoods who put him in a gold-colored pickup truck with license plate AA54E2C and took him away. He is currently missing.”
Gonzalez himself is currently facing an arrest warrant in Venezuela, where he has claimed he was the rightful winner of the July 28 presidential election.
This brought him into conflict with incumbent President Nicolas Maduro, who also achieved victory. Maduro is due to be sworn in for a third term on Friday.
The opposition and other critics of Maduro’s government have protested against the election and official results, which they say lack transparency and fairness.
Polls before the election appeared to show Maduro trailing Gonzalez significantly. But shortly after polls closed, the country’s electoral authority declared Maduro the winner without releasing the usual breakdown of election results.
The Venezuelan opposition has argued that county-level counts show Gonzalez beating Maduro by a margin of two to one and has posted what appear to be official tallies online.
That raised doubts about the legitimacy of his victory, and after the vote, protesters poured into the streets in cities like Caracas.
The government, in turn, was accused of using violence against demonstrators and political opponents after the election.
Initially, around 2,000 people were arrested and 23 were killed, although Maduro’s government recently announced that it had released 1,515 of the detainees. His government has long been accused of political repression and human rights abuses, including torture and arbitrary detention.
In September, Venezuelan government prosecutors accused Gonzalez of conspiracy, usurpation of power and document falsification, and a court issued an arrest warrant for him.
The opposition leader fled the country and went into exile in Spain. But he has promised to return to Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that Gonzalez will be arrested if he returns.
Maduro and his allies allege that Gonzalez and other opposition figures worked with hostile foreign powers to destabilize the country.
In early January, Gonzalez left Spain to tour America to rally support and put pressure on Maduro’s government.
He has already visited Argentina and Uruguay and on Monday met US President Joe Biden, whose government recognized Gonzalez as the legitimate president-elect in November.
While regional leaders have expressed skepticism about Maduro’s claims of victory and condemned the crackdown on protesters, it remains unclear what pressure they can exert on Gonzalez’s behalf.
