Venezuela: Arrest warrant issued for opposition candidate, Washington seizes Maduro plane

Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate who claims victory in the July 28 presidential election against Nicolas Maduro, has been the target of an arrest warrant from the Venezuelan justice system since Monday, while Caracas accuses Washington of “piracy” after the seizure of Mr. Maduro's plane by the United States.

The prosecutor's office claims to have obtained “an arrest order for serious” crimes from a court with jurisdiction over terrorism, according to a statement posted on social media.

Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, has not responded to three summonses from the courts — the last on Friday — who wanted to hear him about the opposition website that claims he will win the presidential election.

The prosecutor's office opened an investigation in early August against Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado for “usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information, incitement to disobedience of the law, incitement to insurrection, criminal association.”

“They have lost all sense of reality. By threatening the elected president (Gonzalez Urrutia), they are only succeeding in bringing us closer together and strengthening the support of Venezuelans and the entire world for Edmundo Gonzalez,” reacted on social networks the leader of the opposition Maria Corina Machado, who like the former ambassador, lives in semi-clandestinity.

To justify his absences, Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia, who has not been seen in public since July 30, said he feared a justice “without guarantee of independence” and Attorney General Tarek William Saab, whom he accuses of behaving “like a political accuser.”

“No one in this country is above the law, above the institutions, as the coward Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia claims,” ​​Maduro said on his weekly television show.

The socialist president, whose victory was validated by the Supreme Court, was declared the winner with 52% of the vote by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which did not make public the minutes of the polling stations, saying it was the victim of computer hacking.

Such an attack is considered implausible by the opposition and many observers, who see it as a maneuver by the government to avoid disclosing the exact count.

According to the opposition, which published the minutes provided by its poll workers, Gonzalez Urrutia obtained more than 60% of the votes.

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After the announcement of Mr. Maduro's re-election, spontaneous demonstrations left 27 dead and 192 injured, while some 2,400 people were arrested, according to official sources.

– “Piracy” –

A large part of the international community, led by the United States, does not recognize Mr. Maduro's re-election.

A plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seized by US authorities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on September 2, 2024 © AFP – Miguel GUTIERREZ

The United States announced Monday that it had “seized an aircraft that we believe was illegally acquired for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his clique,” according to Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.

The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to Florida (southeast), according to the statement.

Venezuela immediately “denounced to the international community (…) a repeated criminal practice that can only be described as an act of piracy,” according to a statement from the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Dominican Republic stressed that it had not participated in the investigation led by Washington.

The Dominican authorities “only” responded to “an international request for mutual legal assistance,” Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez told reporters, specifying that the plane was in his country before the seizure “for maintenance purposes.”

In August 2019, under the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, the American executive branch issued an executive order prohibiting any person in the United States from conducting transactions with anyone who “directly or indirectly acted for or on behalf of the government of Venezuela,” the ministry recalled.

In March 2020, the American Justice Department announced the indictment of Mr. Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials and offered a bounty of up to $15 million for information that would lead to the arrest of the president in power since 2013.

“Mr. Maduro and his representatives falsified the results of the presidential election” (…) and “carried out a large-scale crackdown,” a White House National Security Council spokesman said Monday, saying the seizure was “an important step in ensuring that Mr. Maduro continues to suffer the consequences of his misrule.”

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