Venezuela said Tuesday it had arrested a fourth US citizen over what it claims was a plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro in the aftermath of elections the opposition claims he stole.
The American, who joins three compatriots, two Spaniards and a Czech held by Venezuela, was arrested in Caracas after “taking photos of electrical installations, oil facilities, military units,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said.
He told parliament the man was “part of the plot against Venezuela, the plot against our country” which he said included a plan to “assassinate President Nicolas Maduro” and others, including himself.
On Saturday, Cabello had announced the arrest of the other six foreigners, whom he claimed worked for intelligence agencies and the Venezuelan opposition in the supposed plot to get rid of Maduro.
Washington, Madrid and Prague, which have denied involvement in any such plot, on Monday demanded information from Venezuela about their citizens.
Maduro said Monday they had all “confessed.”
His regime has been at loggerheads with much of the international community since disputed July 28 elections in which the socialist strongman claimed to have won a third six-year term.
The European Union and several Latin American states have refused to accept the election result without Caracas providing a full breakdown of the vote tally, which it has not done.
The United States has said there is “overwhelming evidence” that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won.
Venezuela on Tuesday lodged an official protest with the European Union after the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described Maduro’s government as “dictatorial”.
Borrell made the remarks in an interview broadcast in Spain Sunday.
“The head of the opposition had to flee…. What do you call all that? Of course it is a dictatorial regime,” he said, adding more than 2,000 people had been “detained arbitrarily.”
“Venezuela held elections, but it was not a democracy before, and it is much less so after.”
Venezuela’s deputy foreign minister for Europe, Coromoto Godoy, wrote on social network X Tuesday that she had handed a “note of protest” to the head of the EU delegation in Caracas.
“We will no longer tolerate any interference… The European Union should take care of its own problems,” she added.
‘Unprecedented’ repression
Venezuela’s opposition has published its own count of polling station-level ballots, which it says show Gonzalez Urrutia had won by a landslide.
Gonzalez Urrutia sought asylum in Spain earlier this month after a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges linked to his insistence that Maduro had cheated him out of an election win.
Tensions have since risen between Caracas and Madrid, where a minister last week accused Maduro of running a “dictatorship”.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said Tuesday he had urged his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Albares in a telephone call to “immediately rectify” Madrid’s stance towards his country, adding Venezuela would “not tolerate an escalation of aggressions and interference” from Spain.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed Tuesday to keep pushing for “democratic freedoms” in Venezuela as he spoke virtually with Gonzalez Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who is in hiding.
And in Geneva, a UN fact-finding mission said repression in Venezuela had reached “unprecedented levels of violence” that was “orchestrated by the highest civilian and military levels of government, including President Maduro.”
