Juan Pablo Guanipa, a key ally of Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado, was abducted by armed men just hours after being released from prison, in a dramatic turn that has again placed him at the centre of Venezuela’s political crisis.
Machado said Guanipa, a former vice president of the National Assembly and one of her closest political associates, was forcibly taken away in Caracas shortly after his release on Sunday. “A few minutes ago, Juan Pablo Guanipa was kidnapped in the Los Chorros neighborhood of Caracas. Heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes arrived in four vehicles and took him away by force. We demand his immediate release,” she wrote on social media platform X.
