CARACAS.- Two days after the elections Legislative and regional in Venezuela, the opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipaclose collaborator of the leader María Corina Machadowas arrested This Friday at dawn in Caracas, for the Maduro regimeas confirmed by Minister Diosdado Cabello.
“It is one of the bosses of this terrorist network,” said the Venezuelan regime official.
Guanipa, who was a deputy of the National Assembly for the PJ party, joined the Machado team for the presidential elections of July 28, 2024, and since then he was present in proselytizing acts convened by the opposition leader. After a strong siege he remained in hiding.
This Friday Guanipa published a letter for his networks in which he affirms that if “they are reading this it is because I have been kidnapped by the forces of the Nicolás Maduro regime.”
One of his children, Ramón Guanipa, upon learning of arbitrary detention, shared details about his latest encounter with the opposition leader in Zulia, where he is a native. “The last time I saw you the day before the July elections, you told me that your itinerary was to vote and go to Caracas, ‘to give your life necessary,’ I love you dad. God with you.”
Guanipa, arrested
Hours before, Cabello spread a video, collected by media, in which Guanipa is seen, with a vest, “kidnapped” by regime.
He said he was seized four cell phones and a laptop he possessed to “attempt” against the elections. “Everything is in the plan,” he said.
According to the official, some 38 people who described as “mercenaries” are imprisoned for an alleged plan to sabotage Sunday’s elections.
Among them, he mentioned a Spaniard, a Bulgarian already an Argentine, the latter released yesterday, but the details of the release were not revealed.
More imprisoned by the regime
Guanipa published a post through his X account Thursday, in which he called for abstention in the elections. “The students of the University of Zulia have it clear: we already vote on July 28 and this May 25 we do not lend ourselves to farce or simulations that only seek to legitimize the illegitimate.”
The opposition leader joins other arrests reported by political and human rights organizations, in the last two days.
Vente Venezuela, Organization of Machado, denounced the “kidnapping” of Hostari Molina, secretary of the organization in the state Cojedes, arrested at his residence by Sebin officials, after attending the funeral of a brother.
He also reported the arrest of Lourdes Villarreal, a union leader of teachers in Caracas, when he left his residence in a sector of center of Caracas. “She is persecuted for raising her voice in favor of labor rights,” he says in his X account.
In the afternoon, the arrest of the neighborka fleshalli neighborhood leader, Director of the Forum Hatillano Organization and Electoral Political Coordinator of Caracas Plural City was also reported; and to the journalist Carlos Marcano, whom Cabello linked to the alleged plan.
Maduro said yesterday that 50 people are behind bars for the alleged plan against the elections.
