Juan Guaido, newly vulnerable to arrest, says he is prepared to be imprisoned by the autocratic regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and has a contingency plan for allies to continue the protest movement he leads.
"In the event that they want to, or try to, kidnap me, which they can do without a doubt, there is a complete strategy ready to continue with leadership, but also to intensify pressure," Guaido said in an interview following a conference on the opposition's policy plans to remedy Venezuela's crisis. An arrest "would only catalyze local and international pressure, and I dare say, would be one of the government's final erratic political actions."
Venezuelan law has afforded Guaido, 35, immunity from prosecution because he is the head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. But Maduro created a so-called Constituent Assembly to bypass that legislature, making it politically omnipotent and stacking it with socialist-party loyalists. On Tuesday, it stripped Guaido of protection, because he defied a travel ban to tour Latin American countries that support regime change in Venezuela.