Venezuela prosecutor seeks arrest warrant for opposition candidate Gonzalez

President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the July poll, a result rejected by the opposition and international observers.

Venezuelan prosecutors have sought an arrest warrant for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who claims to have rightfully won July’s disputed election against President Nicolas Maduro.

On Monday, the country’s public prosecutor’s office published a letter on social media that it said it had sent to a “terrorism” judge, asking for a warrant on charges stemming from the opposition’s insistence that Maduro and his allies stole the election.

Shortly afterwards, the attorney general’s office said the court had accepted the request. It did not share any documentation to support its statement.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), made up mostly of Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner of the July 28 vote. The outcome has been disputed by much of the international community, with the US going so far as to recognise Gonzalez as the victor.

The CNE has said it cannot publish records of the results, blaming hackers for allegedly corrupting the data.

Observers have said there is no evidence for the claim.

The opposition has published its own polling-station election results, which it says show Gonzalez winning by a wide margin.

Pedro Brunelli, a Latin America analyst based in Madrid, told Al Jazeera that the arrest warrant was predictable.

“Since Maduro opted to steal the election, he now has to follow through with it,” he said. “What we’ve seen since the election is, on the one hand, evidence that he [Maduro] lost and on the other increasing repression in a country where repression has actually been the norm for the past 15 years. I think it is very clear he lost the election and he is now going to cover that up by going after the winner.”

Gonzalez, a retired diplomat who replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ballot at the last minute, has been in hiding since shortly after the election.

Maduro has asked for his arrest and that of Machado, citing charges that include “usurpation” of public functions, “forgery” of a public document, incitement to disobedience, sabotage, and “association” with organised crime and financiers of “terrorism”.

Gonzalez has so far ignored three summons to appear before prosecutors.

Protests have continued for weeks since the election. As of Monday, at least 27 people have been killed and 192 have been injured in the unrest.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies