Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado waves a national flag during a protest called by the opposition on the eve of the presidential inauguration, in Caracas on January 9, 2025.
Juan Barreto | Afp | Getty Images
Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was freed on Thursday after a brief detention, her Vente Venezuela movement said on social media.
Machado was detained after an anti-government march in Caracas, her first public appearance in months, amid gunshots, the movement said, adding that during her detention she was forced to film several videos.
Earlier, her ally, former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, demanded she be freed immediately as government officials including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said her arrest was “an invention, a lie.”
Vente Venezuela had said Machado was “violently intercepted” in eastern Caracas, and that the motorcycle caravan in which she was riding had been shot at.
The opposition are protesting around the country in an eleventh-hour effort to put pressure on President Nicolas Maduro ahead of his third inauguration on Friday.
The opposition and the ruling party are locked in an ongoing dispute over last year’s presidential election, which they both claim to have won.
The country’s electoral authority and top court say Maduro, whose time in office has been marked by a deep economic and social crisis, won the July vote, though they have never published detailed tallies.
The government, which has accused the opposition of fomenting fascist plots against it, said it will arrest opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez should he return to the country and has detained prominent opposition members and activists in the lead-up to the inauguration.
