Venezuelan opposition denounces arrest of one of its leaders

A prominent Venezuelan opposition figure, Freddy Superlano, has been arrested by law enforcement in Caracas, his party Voluntad Popular (VP) announced on Tuesday, July 30. VP is part of the opposition coalition that is contesting Nicolas Maduro’s victory in the presidential election. In the images posted on the social network X, police officers remove a man resembling Freddy Superlano from a car and forcibly take him to another vehicle before driving away.

At least four people have been killed in Venezuela in protests against Nicolas Maduro’s disputed re-election, according to a count by two NGOs.“We recorded 44 injured and 3 deaths”wrote the hospital monitoring NGO Encuesta nacional de hospitales on X. For its part, the NGO Foro penal announced that one person had been killed in the northwest of the country.

In 2018, Nicolas Maduro’s re-election to the presidency had already been contested. The vote had been boycotted by the opposition, due to lack of guarantees on the transparency of the electoral process. More than a hundred people had subsequently been killed in demonstrations severely repressed by the authorities.