The President of Nicolas Maduro’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, accused this Sunday, January 31, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez of leading an alleged plan to attack pro-government deputies using explosives.
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After years of harassment and a ban to run for elected office, Lopez was arrested in 2014 and charged with inciting a violent riot that nearly unseated Maduro. In 2018 he was remanded to house arrest after spending four years in a military prison. In 2019 he escaped that arrest and entered the Spanish Embassy in Venezuela as a refugee, only to leave in 2020 with the Maduro regime accusing the Spanish ambassador of helping him escape. Lopez resurfaced in Madrid and has been keeping largely quiet.
As evidence, Rodriguez presented a video of a man he identified as Juan Gutierrez Aranguren confessing to being part of a plot to oust Maduro. Also, Aranguren implicating Lopez and the president of the opposition National Assembly, Juan Guaido.
“We have decided to form a special commission to investigate all these facts against Venezuela. From Spain, Leopoldo Lopez planned an attack with bombs against the deputies of the National Assembly. Next week we will present all the evidence,” he said at a press conference from the headquarters of the Venezuelan Parliament.
Unknown to media, Aranguren gets linked to Operacion Gedeon, the failed 2020 Caribbean coast landings that the regime said intended to overthrow it, Rodriguez said. “The detainee confessed much of the information, ratified some suspicions, and showed evidence of what the leaders of Gedeón are like,” he said.
