Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, in hiding since July presidential elections she claims strongman Nicolas Maduro stole, said Sunday her security chief and another staff member had been arrested.
It is the second time Machado’s security chief Milciades Avila has been detained; the first was two weeks before the July 28 vote the opposition says it can prove its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, won by a landslide.
The arrests of Avila and Edwin Moya are the latest in what the opposition says has been a wave of repression following Maduro’s questioned reelection to a third six-year term, rejected by much of the international community.
“Maduro and his regime committed yet another crime. They have kidnapped two honest men, fathers… whose job it is to ensure our security,” Machado said on social media.
“Both have fulfilled their responsibilities in an exemplary manner, always aware of the risk that this entailed in the face of a tyranny that today the world qualifies as a corrupt and criminal system,” she added.
The Foro Penal watchdog had reported 149 “arbitrary arrests,” including 135 members of Machado’s entourage, in the runup to the vote.
Many more have been detained since, and Foro Penal says Venezuela now has the highest number of “political prisoners” in almost 25 years.
Venezuela’s CNE electoral authority, seen as loyal to the regime, declared a victory for Maduro within hours of polls closing, with 52 percent of votes cast.
But most of the international community has refused to accept his win without a detailed vote breakdown, which has not been forthcoming.
The opposition published its own tally of polling station-level results, which it says proves Gonzalez Urrutia won two-thirds of the votes cast.
The United States says there was “overwhelming evidence” Gonzalez Urrutia, a 75-year-old retired diplomat, had won.
He has since taken asylum in Spain after spending weeks in hiding in Venezuela after the vote.
Machado, for her part, has come out in public only a handful of times to lead anti-Maduro protests.
Twenty-seven people were killed in post-election clashes and more than 2,400 arrested for taking part in protests, charged with “terrorism.”
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