Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, did not respond to three summonses from the courts (the last on Friday, August 30) who wanted to hear him about the opposition website that claims he won the presidential election against Nicolas Maduro.
An arrest warrant has been issued by the Venezuelan justice system against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate who claims victory in the presidential election of July 28, in which Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner, announced the prosecutor’s office on Monday, September 2, which had requested a court specializing in terrorism.
“The Court of First Instance (…) grants the arrest order of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia for serious” crimes, the prosecutor’s office wrote on social networks.
The public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation in early August against this candidate and the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado for “usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information, incitement to disobedience of the law, incitement to insurrection, criminal association”.
27 dead in protests since July
The former ambassador, who lives in semi-clandestine circumstances, has not appeared in public since July 30. To justify his absences, he said he feared a justice system “without guarantees of independence” and the attorney general Tarek William Saab, whom he accuses of “behaving like a political accuser.”
Socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whose victory was validated by the Supreme Court, was declared the winner with 52% of the vote by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which has not, however, made 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 scrutineers, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia obtained more than 60% of the votes.
After the announcement of Nicolas Maduro’s re-election, spontaneous demonstrations left 27 dead and 192 injured, while some 2,400 people were arrested, according to official sources.
President Maduro and the government in general regularly blame Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia and the opposition for the violence, believing that the candidate and Ms. Machado should be in prison.
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