Edmundo González faces arrest over charges of allegedly forging election documents and attempting to undermine Venezuela’s Electoral Council.
The vice president of Venezuela said on Saturday that opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia has left the country for political asylum in Spain.
González went into hiding days after the contested results of Venezuela’s July election were announced by the government-controlled National Electoral Council (NEC) on July 28, which declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner with 52 percent support without releasing detailed voting data.
Meanwhile, the opposition published detailed voting tallies from a majority of voting precincts online, which it says is evidence that González won by a convincing margin of over two-thirds. In response, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, issued warrants for González’s arrest over charges of allegedly forging election documents and attempting to undermine the NEC.
González had failed to appear three times in connection to the criminal electoral sabotage investigation.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said on Saturday that González had left Venezuela from the Spanish embassy where he was seeking asylum.
“After taking refuge voluntarily at the Spanish embassy in Caracas a few days ago, [González] asked the Spanish government for political asylum,” she said on Instagram. She added that González’s request to leave the county had been granted by the government.
González’s lawyer Jose Vicente Haro also confirmed the opposition leader’s departure.
Spain’s foreign minister said González had requested asylum and that a Spanish air force plane was sent.
“Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said in a statement.
González, 75, ran against Maduro in July as a widely unknown candidate who registered to run for president after the party’s president Maria Corina Machado was barred from running for public office in March by government authorities.
Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which at the invitation of Maduro’s government observed the election, determined the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility. In a statement critical of the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim to victory, but they said the voting records it published online appear to exhibit all of the original security features.
By Melanie Sun
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