Venezuelan Opposition Condemns Sentences for Leader's Son-in-Law and Ally

Venezuela's largest opposition coalition, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), on Thursday condemned the 30-year prison sentence for Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of its leader Edmundo González Urrutia, as 'unconstitutional and aberrant'. Urrutia, who claims the presidency from exile, stated this is another example of Nicolás Maduro using the judicial system as a tool of persecution. The PUD also strongly condemned the 'unconstitutional' decision against Luis Guillermo Istúriz, a member of Vente Venezuela — the party of opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado — who was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Mariana González, daughter of the former presidential candidate, confirmed that her husband was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiracy after a single trial hearing that lasted more than 12 hours. Tudares was arrested on January 7, three days before Maduro's inauguration for a third consecutive six-year term. Mariana González stated that for 10 months of the process, she and her lawyer were denied access to the case file, and she was not allowed to choose her own defense counsel, being assigned a public defender from whom she has received no information beyond official statements. Edmundo González Urrutia called the sentence a political reprisal aimed at him and an attempt to distort the will expressed by Venezuelans in the July 28, 2024 election, which the PUD considers fraudulent. The opposition bloc asserted that both Tudares and Istúriz are 'totally innocent'.