Mayor of Venezuela's capital Caracas arrested

Caracas, Feb 20 (IANS/EFE) The mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has been arrested by officials of Venezuela's intelligence service (Sebin) at the downtown headquarters of his party, officials close to the politician told Efe news agency.

Ledezma was in his office at the party headquarters in the EXA Tower in the eastern El Rosal neighborhood when Sebin officials arrested him Thursday and began searching his office, the same sources said.

Last week, Mayor of the Caracas municipality of Libertador, Jorge Rodriguez, a supporter of late President Hugo Chavez, accused Ledezma and opposition lawmaker Julio Borges of being the intellectual authors of a coup attempt that was broken up a day before it was to have been staged Feb 12, as announced by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president of the Venezuelan legislature, government supporter Diosdado Cabello, said that the alleged plot, evidently called the "Jericho Plan", involved opposition figures Ledezma, Borges, Maria Corina Machado and Diego Arria, Venezuela's former ambassador to the UN.

Ledezma at the time rejected those claims and emphasised that "so far during the Maduro regime there have been 12 alleged coups d'etat".

"Here, those who have coup-making in their bones are those gentlemen who are in the government," he said.

"The government speaks of destabilisation movements, and what is destabilising the country is corruption," he added.

Opposition deputy Richard Blanco, who belongs to Ledezma's party, the Fearless People's Alliance (ABP) and opposition leader Machado, who came to the site of Ledezma's arrest Thursday, told reporters that the Sebin agents fired their weapons into the air, broke down the doors of the metropolitan mayor's office and took him away in handcuffs.

Blanco and Machado then went to the Sebin headquarters on Venezuela Square in Caracas, where Ledezma had been taken.

Ledezma has been the metropolitan mayor of Caracas since 2008, although his powers have been severely curtailed by the government.

--IANS/EFE

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