Venezuela Abducts Opposition Political Prisoner Hours After ‘Release’
Venezuela’s socialist regime arrested opposition figure Juan Pablo Guanipa on Sunday, less than 12 hours after his release from prison, where he spent eight months unjustly detained on dubious “terrorism” charges.
According to a press release from the Venezuelan Public Prosecutor’s Office, Guanipa violated the conditions of his release and will be placed under house arrest. His whereabouts are unknown at press time.
Guanipa, a former lawmaker, is a close ally of anti-socialist opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado. He spent ten months in hiding before the Venezuelan regime unjustly arrested him in May 2025. At the time, the Venezuelan regime accused him of being involved in an alleged “terrorist” plot against that year’s sham regional and legislative elections.
The politician was released from prison alongside a group of around 30 other political prisoners that the regime released on Sunday morning. Guanipa announced his release in a brief video and said: “There is much to discuss about the present and future of Venezuela, always with the truth at the forefront. »
Moments after his release, Guanipa, accompanied by a group of motorcyclists, went near the Helical (“The Helix”), Venezuela’s largest and most infamous torture center, to accompany relatives of political prisoners still in the detention center.
Speaking to journalists outside the Helicoide, Guanipa explain that the only restrictions imposed for his “release” were a mandatory court appearance every 30 days and a ban on traveling outside the country. Guanipa announced that he would return to the state of Zulia, where he was born.
Hours later, on Sunday evening, Guanipa’s son, Ramón Guanipa, used his father’s social media accounts to denounce that a group of around ten armed men had intercepted and kidnapped the politician, claiming that “a silver Corolla, a white Range Rover and a Renault symbol” had been used by the men who took his father away.
“I want to alert the whole world that my father has been kidnapped again. My father, Juan Pablo Guanipa, was attending an event at 11:45 p.m. when he was ambushed by around ten officials who had no identification. They pointed their guns at him, were heavily armed and took my father away,” Guanipa’s son said in a video.
“I immediately demand proof of life and I hold the regime responsible for everything that happens to my father. Enough of this repression,” he continued.
Venezuelan news site El Nacional reported that hours before his arrest, Guanipa said in an interview that he was not prohibited from making public statements.
“No one told me that I had to limit myself in my public opinions. And I didn’t limit myself. I said the things that I said with total respect, but I have to say what I think, and I believe that is the idea behind everything that we are experiencing in this country,” Guanipa was quoted as saying. “In other words, people talk to me about reconciliation, and I agree, but with truth and justice at the forefront. »
Guanipa’s son, Ramón Guanipa, provided more details about his father’s arrest during a press conference Monday morning in Caracas and denounced that his father remains in a state of enforced disappearance since Sunday evening. He told reporters that his father was kidnapped while participating in an activity in Los Chorros, Caracas, when ten armed men in civilian clothes ambushed the politician and his companions.
“He was ambushed by three vehicles. They hit the entrance to the house where they were staying, hit the truck in which they were traveling. Faced with the aggressiveness of these people, my father decided to go out and they took him away. They only took my father away,” he explained.
Venezuela’s public prosecutor’s office said Monday that it had asked the court to revoke Guanipa’s release on the grounds that he “did not comply with the conditions imposed by the aforementioned court,” but did not disclose specific details. The Office also requested that the politician be placed under house arrest.
The statement concluded:
Finally, the Public Prosecutor’s Office invokes the spirit of the ongoing program of democratic coexistence and peace, as well as the consultation of the amnesty law, in order to guarantee the unity and reconciliation of Venezuelans in this historic moment. Venezuela calls for a space for national dialogue within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic.
Last week, at the request of “interim president” Delcy Rodríguez, socialist lawmakers unanimously passed an amnesty bill that would grant clemency to hundreds of the regime’s political prisoners as well as exiled Venezuelan dissidents and politicians living abroad. Under the terms of the Venezuelan legislature, a second debate must take place before the bill can move forward, but this was not planned at press time.
“They say he will be under house arrest, but they have not told us where he is or where he will be transferred. My father has not returned home. Right now he is still missing,” said Ramón Guanipa, recalling that the conditions of his father’s release only included a court appearance every 30 days and a ban on traveling outside the country.
“He is still missing at this time. Speaking and expressing yourself is not a crime and we cannot continue to allow ourselves to be punished for this,” he said during another part of the press conference.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer who documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
