A Venezuelan opposition activist who was arrested during anti-government protests in January has died in jail, his party has said.
Reinaldo Araujo, a leader of the Vente Venezuela party in Trujillo state, had been suffering from health problems, which his wife said were not treated while he was in prison.
Vente Venezuela’s leader, María Corina Machado, said she held “the regime” of Nicolás Maduro responsible for Araujo’s death.
According to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory NGO, 20 political prisoners have died while in custody over the past few years.
Vente Venezuela said Araujo had been seized by masked men on 9 January during a protest on the eve of the swearing in of Nicolás Maduro for a third term as president.
His wife said he had been returning from a medical appointment and had merely been observing the protest when he was taken away.
He had been in state custody since then.
Read: Jailed Venezuelan activist details brutality of prison life
His wife accuses the authorities of failing to providing her husband with medical care until it was too late, even though she had warned them that his health had been deteriorating.
The head of the regional body Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, denounced Araujo’s death, writing on X that it was a “new atrocity of the regime”.
He added: “No more political prisoners, no more torture, no more death.”
Almagro has been an outspoken critic of Nicolás Maduro, accusing the Venezuelan leader of repressing the opposition in the run-up and the aftermath of July’s presidential election.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), a body closely aligned with the government, declared Maduro the winner of the election without providing detailed voting tallies to back up their claim.
The OAS’s electoral observation department said it could not recognise the result because the CNE “was biased towards the government”.
Venezuela’s opposition coalition also refused to recognise the result, saying that voting tallies it had gathered, with the help of official election observers, showed that its candidate, Edmundo González, was the overwhelming winner.
The opposition also organised protests on the eve of Maduro’s swearing in and it was at one such event that Reinaldo Araujo was seized.
According to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, hundreds of protesters were arrested in the days leading up to Maduro’s inauguration and sent to jails notorious for the mistreatment of detainees.
Among those seized was Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of Edmundo González.
Mr Tudares’s wife says she has not been given any information about her husband’s whereabouts since he was taken away by the security forces on 7 January.
She also accused the government of holding her husband in order to exert pressure on Edmundo González, who is living in exile and has been meeting presidents across the region, many of whom have recognised him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
