A Venezuelan opposition party said Friday that one of its activists, detained earlier this week in the western state of Apure, had been "murdered."
Edwin Santos "was murdered after being abducted by members of the state security forces" on Wednesday, the Voluntad Popular (VP) party said, blaming the iron-fisted regime of left-wing President Nicolás Maduro, whose re-election in July has been rejected by the opposition and several nations as fraudulent.
VP said Santos was found dead Friday morning on a bridge that had been a focus of his advocacy, after going missing Wednesday afternoon while traveling in the rural El Piñal district.
"Witnesses in the region confirmed that he was intercepted by state security agents," the party said in a statement.
It added that it had confirmed Thursday he was in custody at the headquarters of Venezuela's military counter-intelligence agency in Guasdualito, a city close to the Colombian border.
Venezuelan police commissioner Douglas Rico rejected the claim Santos had been murdered, saying in a statement that he died "as the result of an accident when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a tree."
"We reject any false reports distributed by some media outlets and spokespersons, who aimed to manipulate and say that the National Government could be behind this unfortunate event," Rico said.
Party official Adriana Pichardo told AFP that Santos's wife had identified his body.
Popular opposition leader María Corina Machado meanwhile demanded "that international justice be applied in the crimes against humanity that are growing in Venezuela."
VP said that "during the past few months he had fought for his community, denouncing the collapse of the bridge that links Apure with [the neighbouring state of] Tachira."
"It was on that bridge that he was found dead this morning," it added.
The bridge collapsed in July following heavy rain.
Writing on social platform X from Spain, where he is in exile, opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia called for "justice" to be served over Santos's death.
"Venezuela wants and needs the truth," said González Urrutia, who on Thursday shared the European Union's top human rights prize with Machado for resisting Maduro's regime.
Venezuelan opposition activists have been targeted in a sweeping crackdown since July elections in which Maduro claimed to have won a third term, despite the opposition publishing detailed polling results showing González Urrutia winning by a large margin.
– TIMES/AFP
