Caracas, Sep 3: Venezuela's Attorney General's Office sought an arrest warrant against former Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia for various charges, including conspiracy, usurpation of authority, and sabotage. The office posted on its Instagram account a letter addressed to the judge on Monday presiding over cases related to terrorism, detailing a series of alleged offences, including document forgery and incitement to defy the law, reports Xinhua news agency.
Gonzalez ignored three summonses to appear before prosecutors investigating him. Earlier, the former opposition candidate was summoned to testify in court regarding his alleged involvement in crimes related to the presidential elections held on July 28. After losing the July 28 presidential elections, Gonzalez and another opposition presidential candidate, Maria Corina Machado, refused to recognise President Nicolas Maduro's win and claimed the result was fraught with irregularities.
Maduro received 5,150,092 valid votes in the elections, representing 51.2 per cent of the votes, according to Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE). Gonzalez received 4,445,978 votes, or 44.2 per cent of the total votes, according to the CNE. Earlier, Maduro submitted an appeal to the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice to audit and certify the results of the presidential elections amid calls for greater transparency.
In response, Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) validated the presidential election results, declaring that Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president. The National Electoral Council announced that the Electoral Chamber of the court validated the results of the presidential election, stating that the ruling was "verified in an unrestricted and unequivocal manner" by national and international electoral experts who participated in the auditing process.
