Caracas, Venezuela | AFP | Wednesday 03/09/2024 – “No asylum request”: Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate who claims victory in the July 28 presidential election, is not considering seeking asylum abroad despite the sword of Damocles of the arrest warrant issued against him on Monday by the Venezuelan justice system and rejected by a large part of the international community.
“No asylum request has been made” to any embassy, his lawyer José Vicente Haro told the press on Tuesday. “This is an issue that has not been raised by the family or Mr. Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.”
The United States, the European Union and nine Latin American countries on Tuesday rejected the arrest warrant issued against the former candidate who has not been seen in public since July 30, with the UN saying it was “following developments with concern”.
At the request of the prosecutor’s office, a court with jurisdiction over terrorism ordered the arrest of the 75-year-old diplomat as part of investigations for “disobedience to the laws”, “conspiracy”, “usurpation of functions” and “sabotage”.
Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia did not respond to three summonses from the courts who wanted to hear him about the opposition website that gives him the victory. He justified himself on social networks by referring to the lack of “independence” of the justice system and a prosecutor who is a “political accuser”.
His lawyer clarified on Tuesday that Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia had “nothing to do with the whole process of collecting copies, minutes (from the polling stations), scanning these minutes and uploading them to the website. It was a civic action on the part of the polling station scrutineers.”
Socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whose victory was validated by the Supreme Court on August 22, was declared the winner with 52% of the vote by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which did not make public the minutes of the polling stations, saying it was the victim of a computer hack.
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, Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia obtained more than 60% of the vote.
A large part of the international community, led by the United States, does not recognize Mr. Maduro’s re-election, and has rejected the arrest warrant issued Monday.
“This is another example of Maduro’s attempts to maintain power by force and to refuse to recognize that Mr. Gonzalez won the majority of the votes,” added John Kirby, on behalf of the National Security Council.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil reacted to the American position “complicit with the criminal gang that tried to burn the country (…) You are now throwing tantrums when justice targets the organizers of the violence (…) Respect our country and our sovereignty, we will continue to move forward despite your hatred and your neocolonial pretensions.”
After the announcement of Mr. Maduro’s re-election, spontaneous demonstrations left 27 dead and 192 injured, while some 2,400 people were arrested, according to official sources.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, also “categorically” rejected the arrest warrant and urged “the Venezuelan authorities to respect his freedom, integrity and human rights”.
In the same vein, nine Latin American countries – Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay – said they “unequivocally and absolutely reject the arrest warrant”, according to a joint statement.
Left-wing allies Brazil and Colombia, which host millions of Venezuelan refugees, expressed their “deep concern” on Tuesday evening, believing that this arrest warrant “makes it difficult to find a peaceful solution”. A hardening of the positions of Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, who had so far multiplied their negotiation efforts.
Shortly before the arrest warrant was announced, Washington announced on Monday that it had seized a plane used by Mr Maduro and “illegally acquired for $13 million through a front company”. Venezuela has called the seizure an act of “piracy”.
“There are a number of things that we have asked him (Maduro) to do, to stop repressing dissent, to publish the polling station records, which he still hasn’t done, and to put Venezuela back on the path to democracy,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday.
“He has not shown a willingness to do that and that is why (…) we are considering a range of options,” he added.
This article is originally published on tahiti-infos.com
