Four people were arrested in the country for questioning Maduro’s reelection

***Opposition parties and human rights defenders denounced these events, which occurred this Saturday

Two political leaders, a priest and a lawyer were arrested in Venezuela in separate incidents that the opposition and human rights organizations denounced on Saturday as “repression” of any questioning of the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro.

Piero Maroún, leader of the historic social-democratic party Acción Democrática, “was with his wife and sister-in-law in a restaurant at 10:20 pm (on Friday) when he was detained by three unidentified people,” wrote opposition leader María Corina Machado in X, without detailing where his arrest took place.

Carlos Molina, from the Un Nuevo Tiempo party, was arrested after taking part in a rally in the city of Valencia (north-central Spain). “Repressive forces pulled him out of a van,” said Machado’s party, Vente Venezuela.

NGOs and activists are denouncing a wave of “repression” following the official results of the July 28 elections, in which Maduro was proclaimed re-elected for a third six-year term, until 2031. The opposition, for its part, is claiming the victory of Edmundo González Urrutia, representative of the disqualified leader María Corina Machado.

Priest Elvis Cabarca was arrested by the Bolivarian National Guard, a military body with law enforcement functions, while he was praying a rosary in a chapel on August 17 amid protests.

“The father boarded a van and the GNB took him away in a tow truck,” the human rights NGO Provea reported in X.

In Puerto Ayacucho, in the southern state of Amazonas, there was also “the arrest of human rights lawyer Henry Alexander Gómez Fernández. He was reportedly arrested with other people whose identities we are confirming,” said the lawyer of Gonzalo Himiob of the NGO Foro Penal.

With information from AFP