González Urrutia will not be able to testify or participate in public gatherings until his situation in Spain is regularised: lawyer

Former opposition presidential candidate in exile Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia will not be allowed to speak to the press or participate in public demonstrations until his situation in Spain, where he arrived after requesting asylum, is regularized, his lawyer said Tuesday.

José Vicente Haro, González Urrutia’s lawyer, said that he is currently carrying out the formalities required by Spanish law and that, until he has complied, “he cannot make statements or participate in public gatherings.”

“These limitations will last until he has the corresponding status completed and is finally granted the documents that allow him to somehow develop everything that is the exercise of his civil and political rights with respect to the case of Venezuela without interfering in Spanish foreign policy,” he said in an interview with journalist Elyangelica González on a program on the network. Univision.

González Urrutia, a 75-year-old retired ambassador who the opposition says won the July 28 presidential election, arrived in Spain on Sunday with his wife and has since made three statements.

The most recent was this Tuesday, through his daughter, Carolina González, who at a rally in Madrid called by the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, ratified the “unwavering” commitment she assumed in the presidential elections of July 28 and asked the international community to “redouble efforts to restore democracy and freedom in Venezuela.”

Previously, through an audio, he stated that his departure from Caracas was surrounded by “episodes of pressure, coercion and threats.” On Monday released a brief statement in which he stated that the freedom of the people deprived of liberty who have supported him is for him a “great priority” and “an unwavering demand.”

“The will of the people expressed on July 28 must be respected and we will make sure it is respected. María Corina and I assure you that this struggle that we started will continue until we achieve the objectives that we set, until the end,” González read.

Haro ruled out the possibility that one of González Urrutia’s two daughters, who is still in Venezuela with her family, is under threat.

“They are, in general, living their normal life as a family, acting with relative prudence,” he said in the interview.

González Urrutia left Venezuela days after his country’s justice system issued an arrest warrant against him, after failing to appear at three summons from the Public Prosecutor’s Office that is investigating him, among other crimes, for alleged “usurpation of functions” for publishing on a website the minutes kept by his polling station witnesses that would have declared him the winner of the presidential elections on July 28.

More than a month after the election, the electoral authority has not released the detailed results, which has been questioned by dozens of countries that have not recognized Nicolás Maduro, proclaimed winner of the elections, as president-elect.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has said that Gonzalez Urrutia’s life was in danger in Venezuela, said that his exile “changes absolutely nothing” and that wherever he is, he is the “elected president.”

“At this moment there is a reality, Edmundo González Urrutia, in the circumstances in which he was in Venezuela, could not perform all the functions associated with the leadership that this moment requires, from outside he can do so with much greater protection and security,” Machado said.

Maduro said on Monday that he personally led the process that culminated in González Urrutia’s exile, that he respects his decision and refused to reveal details, arguing that he reserves the “constitutional right to state secrecy.”

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