Opposition Leader Gonzalez Flees Venezuela

Edmundo Gonzalez, the opposition presidential candidate who ran against President Nicolas Maduro in elections in July, has left the country, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said.

In a post on Instagram, Rodriguez said Gonzalez had left the Spanish embassy, where he was seeking asylum, and left Venezuela.

Spain's foreign minister said in the post on X that Gonzalez was flying to Spain on a Spanish Air Force plane.

Venezuela's attorney general's office requested an arrest warrant be issued for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, after Gonzalez failed to respond to three summons to testify about an opposition website which published detailed results of the country's disputed presidential election.

The website is being investigated for "usurping the function" of the electoral authority, which says President Nicolas Maduro won the July 28 contest but has not published detailed results.

Venezuela's national electoral authority and its top court have said Maduro was the victor of the election with just over half of the votes, but tallies posted by the opposition show a resounding victory for Gonzalez.

The opposition, some Western countries and international bodies like a United Nations panel of experts have said the vote was not transparent and demanded publication of full tallies, with some outright decrying fraud.

Ruling party officials including Maduro have accused the opposition of stoking violence and Attorney General Tarek Saab has launched criminal probes into opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, Gonzalez and the website where the opposition posted its copies of ballot box-level vote tallies.

Protests since the vote have led to at least 27 deaths.

The dramatic exit of the 75-year-old - seen by the U.S., the EU and other powers in the region as the winner of the vote - came a week after Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant for him, accusing him of conspiracy and other crimes.