Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia touched down in Spain as a political asylum seeker on Sunday, after the Venezuelan judiciary put out a warrant for his arrest earlier this week.
González is charged with conspiracy, sabotage, and manipulating public documents, among other crimes, for publishing electoral tallies that allegedly prove he beat President Nicolás Maduro in the July 28 elections and that there was electoral fraud.
The Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a communiqué that González arrived in Madrid with his wife on an airplane from the country’s Air Force on Sunday at around 4 p.m. local time.
“From now on, he will begin the paperwork to request political asylum, which will have favorable results in line with Spain’s commitment to political rights and the wellbeing of all Venezuelans, especially political leaders,” the release said.
González had taken refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas after the Venezuelan judiciary ordered his arrest on Monday. The warrant came after González failed to attend three summonses from the Public Prosecutors Office to explain why his coalition published electoral tallies on a website. In Venezuela, a person can be summoned three times before being considered a flight risk. After that, the judiciary can issue an arrest warrant.
On Tuesday, González sent a letter to the Office saying that he didn’t obey the summonses because they were unfounded and said he “didn’t usurp the jurisdiction of the National Electoral Council” when he published the tallies, given it is legal to provide those tallies to ensure the reliability of the results.
He added that obeying the summonses “would only contribute to increasing social tension even more,” while also escalating judicial political persecution.
González ran as a presidential candidate in replacement of the main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who was barred from participating in the election. After the vote, Machado announced that her team had set up a parallel electronic vote-counting system that showed that the true winner was González, not Maduro.
With 83.5% of the total tallies counted, the opposition website shows González got 67% of the vote while Maduro got 30%. Machado and González have published the tallies for public consultation on their website.
Maduro has not complied with international requests to show electoral tallies and insists that he won the election with 51.95% of the vote. His government has also said the tallies released by the opposition are fake.
Meanwhile, diplomatic tension with other countries of the region continues as Venezuela has revoked Brazil’s custody of the Argentine embassy in Caracas on Saturday, claiming that the building was being used to “plan terrorist activities and magnicide attempts” against Maduro.
Six opposition members have been living there under political asylum since March. Police have been surrounding the building since Friday, as it has done several times since the July elections.
Shortly after Venezuela’s decision was announced, Brazil insisted that it will not comply with it and, in line with international treaties, will continue to custody of the embassy until Argentina names another country for this task.
Brazil has been in custody of the Argentine embassy since August 1 after Venezuela cut ties with Argentina when President Javier Milei traded barbs with Maduro and said he wasn’t the real winner of the election. Venezuela expelled Argentina’s diplomatic mission after this and recalled its own staff from Buenos Aires, leaving the embassy adrift with the opposition members inside.
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