Venezuelan Intelligence Arrests Opposition Mayor

Local Editor

Venezuela upped pressure on the opposition Wednesday after weeks of protests, arresting the mayor of the town where they started and seeking a probe of a prominent anti-government lawmaker.

Authorities said the death toll from the protests rose to at least 30 after a policeman died trying to break up a protest in the western city of San Cristobal, where the demos began February 4.

They later spread to Caracas and many other cities, although they are now losing intensity.

President Nicolas Maduro's government has been the target of daily protests.
Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez said San Cristobal Mayor Daniel Ceballos has been detained on charges of fueling "civilian uprising" and "supporting" violence in his city in the western state of Tachira.

Prosecutors "issued an arrest warrant... for fomenting civilian uprising," which the Bolivarian Intelligence Service carried out, Rodriguez said on state television VTV.
"This is an act of justice... He has fostered and aided all the irrational violence first unleashed in the city of San Cristobal."
Ceballos is the second leader of the opposition group Popular Will detained over the deadly protests, the biggest challenge yet to Maduro's elected socialist government.

The group's leader Leopoldo Lopez has been detained for over a month in a military facility near Caracas.

In Caracas, congress voted to request a probe of prominent anti-government legislator Maria Corina Machado on suspicion of "instigating delinquency, treason, terrorism and homicide" stemming from the protests.
Pro-government legislators presented tapes of Machado's telephone conversations as the basis for a probe.

She fired back on Twitter that "if they think that by threatening me and invading my immunity they are going to silence me, they do not know me."
Maduro contends the protests are part of a fascist right-wing, US-backed plot to destabilize his year-old government.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team