Exiled Venezuelan Opposition Leader Arrested Upon Returning Home

An attorney for former Gov. Manuel Rosales said Friday night that a judge had ordered the 63-year-old to remain in custody until a verdict is reached.

Agents of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) detained the opposition official at the worldwide airport of Maracaibo, capital of Zulia State, where Rosales served as governor in the past.

Rosales went into hiding in March 2009, ahead of a court hearing to decide whether he should be jailed pending trial.

He ran against the late President Hugo Chavez in 2006.

The opposition leader is facing 11 charges, including corruption, illicit gain and embezzelment of funds.

Ahead of his arrest, Rosales said he would continue to oppose the 16-year-old Socialist administration and encouraged Venezuelans in the election.

Authorities warned Rosales of the arrest warrant, but he still announced his plan to return last week and then posted a picture of himself holding a boarding pass on Twitter shortly before departing.

The upcoming parliamentary elections will be the first since President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.

The U.S. government and the United Nations have called for the release of the opposition politicians. “He’s coming back now because he wants to be here for that”.

Rosales, has previously said he wanted to take part in December’s parliamentary elections, but he was detained shortly after landing in the city of Maracaibo on Thursday from the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. The country’s main opposition groups immediately began denouncing his arrest as arbitrary and further evidence of a broken justice system. Rosales’ detention was preceded by the imprisonment of several opposition figures, including leader Leopoldo López last month, who was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for leading anti-government protests in 2014.

At the airport was his wife Eveling Trejo, the current mayor of Maracaibo, as well as members of his extended family and party sympathisers. She told a crowd of supporters that the best way they could show their solidarity would be to vote in December.

“He knows that this gesture will put him again on the political scene”, he said.