Venezuela's opposition says party leader kidnapped hours after being freed

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said her opposition colleague Juan Pablo Guanipa has been kidnapped just hours after being released from detention.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said on Sunday that Guanipa, leader of the Justice First party, was taken in the Los Chorros neighbourhood of the capital, Caracas.

"Heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes arrived in four vehicles and took him away by force," she wrote on social media early on Monday.

A former vice-president of the National Assembly, Guanipa spent eight months in prison and was among several political prisoners released since the US seized Venezuela's then-President Nicolás Maduro in January.

Guanipa's centre-right party said he had been kidnapped by the "repressive forces of the dictatorship" while he was moving between locations.

They added that those accompanying him said weapons were pointed at the group before Guanipa was loaded into a car.

"We hold Delcy Rodríguez, Jorge Rodríguez, and Diosdado Cabello responsible for any harm to Juan Pablo's life," Justice First wrote on social media, referring to Venezuela's interim president, the National Assembly speaker, and the interior minister respectively.

The party also called on the international community to demand the "immediate release" of Guanipa and an end to the Venezuelan government's "persecution of the opposition".

Just hours earlier, Guanipa's son Ramón was celebrating his father's release on social media: "Our entire family will be able to hug again soon."

He subsequently posted a video online in which he demanded immediate proof that his father was still alive.

"I hold the regime responsible for anything that happens to my father. Enough of this repression," Ramón Guanipa said in the video.

Guanipa was among at least 30 people freed on Sunday, according to Foro Penal, which provides assistance to political prisoners in Venezuela.

The leader of the Justice First party, he was elected governor of the Zulia region in 2017 but was barred from taking office after he refused to swear an oath before Maduro's National Constituent Assembly.

Guanipa went into hiding after being accused of terrorism and treason for challenging the 2024 election result.

He was tracked down by Venezuela's security forces and detained in May 2025.

Opposition and human rights groups say the government under Maduro had for years used detentions of political prisoners to stamp out dissent and silence critics.