Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek William Saab during an interview with AFP, on November 12, 2024. Photo: Juan Barreto/AFP.
The attorney general of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, has stated that if Edmundo González returns to Venezuela, he would be immediately arrested under the existing arrest warrant against him. The far-right Venezuelan opposition has launched a campaign to create anxiety among the population, with a so-called “swearing in” ceremony for González scheduled to take place on January 10.
“He knows that if he enters Venezuela he will be automatically detained,” Saab noted in an interview with the international news agency AFP, published this Tuesday, November 12.
He confirmed the validity of the arrest warrant against González, who has repeatedly stated his intention to travel to Venezuela from his hiding place in Spain on the aforementioned date to be sworn in as president of Venezuela, despite his loss in the elections.
The former candidate is accused of various crimes, all of them iterated in national legislation: conspiracy, usurpation of functions, forgery of documents, instigation to disobedience of laws, disregard for state institutions, dissemination of false information, and sabotage, among others.
In the interview, Saab also said that the state’s actions had prevented a civil war, referring to their mobilization of the masses against the violence instigated by the far-right in the aftermath of the elections.
“The plan [of the far-right opposition] was to claim fraud in order to escalate a terrorist action,” he said. “If we had not acted at that time as we did, Venezuela would have been in the throes of a civil war. That is why I say that this was premeditated.”
The top representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office also mentioned the leader of the Venezuelan far-right, MarĂa Corina Machado, confirming that she is the subject of an investigation.
“She is being investigated in the terms that I have already made sufficiently public and widely known,” he told AFP.
The current minister of the interior, justice, and peace, Diosdado Cabello, also recently referred to the comments of the former far-right presidential candidate about returning to the country on January 10 of next year.
“Our friends have a welcoming committee for [González],” said Minister Cabello, “because he says he is coming to be sworn in. We are going to wait for him at the airport.”
(Ăšltimas Noticias) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
