CARACAS, Venezuela — Juan Pablo Guanipa, a close political ally of Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado, has been placed under house arrest, his family said on Tuesday, two days after he was released from prison.
Guanipa, a former governor for the opposition, is at home in the northwest city of Maracaibo, his son, Ramón Guanipa, posted on X.
''My father remains unjustly imprisoned — because house arrest is still imprisonment — and we demand his immediate and full freedom, as well as the freedom of all political prisoners,'' he wrote said.
The government had released Guanipa along with several other prominent opposition members on Sunday following lengthy politically motivated detentions. But he was rearrested hours later following his participation in demonstrations outside detention centers.
Ramón Guanipa told reporters that a group of armed men in three vehicles intercepted his father and others traveling on Sunday in a neighborhood in the capital, Caracas.
He said his father did not violate the two conditions of his release — monthly check-ins with a court and no travel outside Venezuela — and showed reporters the court document listing them.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab's office on Monday posted on social media that it had ''requested the competent court to revoke the precautionary measure granted to Juan Pablo Guanipa, due to his non-compliance with the conditions imposed by the aforementioned court." It did not explain what conditions Guanipa violated during the roughly 12 hours he was free.
The rearrest of Guanipa marks the latest twist in the political turmoil in Venezuela in the wake of the U.S. military's seizure on Jan. 3 of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from a compound in Caracas. The couple were taken to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.
