Venezuela’s chief state prosecutor on Wednesday said that her office obtained warrants to arrest three opposition activists for failing to appear to testify in an investigation into an alleged plot to kill Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s leaders last month accused opposition leaders of planning Maduro’s assassination to pave the way for a coup. The opposition dismissed the charges as laughably fabricated and based on forged documents.
In an interview with state television, Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz said arrest orders were issued for former candidate and UN ambassador Diego Arria, who ran in the 2012 opposition presidential primaries; Pedro Burelli, former external director of Petroleos de Venezuela and Ricardo Koesling, an attorney who has been a strong critic of the Maduro administration.
Ortega Diaz said that groups are seeking to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government and have formed “violent political plans” against Maduro and other high-ranking officials.
Authorities investigating the alleged plot had summoned the three men to appear as witnesses.
Because the three men being sought are believed to be out of Venezuela, authorities plan to ask Interpol to help capture them, Ortega Diaz said.
Prosecutors are seeking their arrests for not appearing as ordered by a court summons.
The prosecutor’s office said that the three are not officially charged with participating in the alleged assassination plan.
Burelli, who has lived in the US for several years, responded with his Twitter account, saying Ortega Diaz “is going down the wrong road.” He told the newspaper El Universal earlier this week that he is working with his lawyer to prove that the accusations “are based on forged e-mails.”
A prominent female opposition figure, former congresswoman Maria Corina Machado, who Socialist Party leaders accused of being the primary organizer of the alleged plot, has been called in to testify on Monday. She has denied any involvement in a plot to oust Maduro.
Machado helped spearhead three months of protests seeking Maduro’s resignation. The protests routinely turned violent.
Via Twitter, Machado scoffed at the Socialist Party’s accusations, calling them “infamy.”
Maduro, like his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez, has repeatedly denounced opposition plots to kill him or stage a coup. He says the protests, which have largely died down, were part of US-backed plot to oust him.
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