One year ago, Juan Guaido claimed as interim president of Venezuela. At first, Maduro tried to ignore him, but now the younger politician has the backing of more than 60 countries and the company from the U.S.
“The day in which the courts of the Republic send out the mandate to arrest Juan Guaido for all of the crimes he has committed, that day he will go to jail. That day has not arrived, but it will come,” promised the normally agitated Maduro.
You must read: Juan Guaido returns to Venezuela after an international tour
The questioned president Nicolas Maduro has the power of the courts and the police -according to activists and the opposition- and publicly announcing that a political rival will be arrested, as the case of Leopoldo Lopez in 2014 and others before and after him.
Already, Guaido’s uncle Juan Jose Marquez, a professional pilot, is in custody accused of bringing explosives from Portugal to Venezuela on a commercial flight. Portugal and the airline said that the flight was clean because the President of Venezuela -meaning Guaido- was on board and extra precautions taken in Lisbon.
And putting people in jail for political reasons is a Maduro specialty: while his predecessor Hugo Chavez only kept like a dozen of them, Maduro has almost 400 according to local NGO Foro Penal.
Guaido arrived Tuesday in Venezuela after three weeks on an international tour in which he met DonaldTrump at the White House and Boris Johnson in London during the World Economic Forum in Davos. The tour included meetings with European heads of state like Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, as well as hemispheric leaders like Justin Trudeau and Ivan Duque.
