MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuelan government confirms arrest of an uncle of Guaidó on suspicion of smuggling “dangerous material”

Juan José Márquez was travelling with Mr Guaidó from Lisbon to Caracas by plane and vanished on Tuesday after being stopped by tax agency personnel

A top Venezuelan government official has confirmed that the uncle of opposition leader Juan Guaidó is being held on suspicion of smuggling “dangerous material” into the country.

Juan José Márquez was travelling with Mr. Guaidó from Lisbon to Caracas by plane and vanished on Tuesday after being stopped by tax agency personnel. Mr Guaidó called it a “cowardly move”.

The official did not say how Mr Márquez would have managed to smuggle the items onto an international flight.

Mr Márquez is not the first person with links to Mr Guaidó to be arrested. His chief of staff, Roberto Marrero, was detained last year and remains in prison.

Diosdado Cabello, widely considered the second most powerful man in President Nicolás Maduro's government, spoke of Márquez's arrest on his weekly TV program.

“No, he's not forcibly disappeared, he is being held for bringing in forbidden substances on a flight,” Mr Cabello alleged. Cabello showed photos of a bulletproof vest and what he said was explosive material which Marquez had allegedly tried to smuggle into Venezuela.

“He carried tactical flashlights which contained, hidden in the battery compartment, chemical substances of an explosive nature, presumably C-4 synthetic explosives,” he said. Cabello did not say how Márquez would have managed to smuggle such items onto an international commercial flight from Lisbon in Portugal to Caracas.

“No doubt they [the opposition] are going to shout about this [arrest],” Cabello said. “Let them, because if this arrest is going to save the life of one Venezuelan, so be it. Enough is enough, who knows who he was going to use those explosives on?” he asked.

“Tomorrow, they're probably going to say we made this up and that he is a little saint.”

Cabello said Márquez would not be released and a court later ruled that he should continue to be held. Local media reported that Márquez was driven away from the court in a car belonging to Venezuela's military counterintelligence agency (DGCIM).

Mr Guaidó called President Maduro a “coward, who does not show his face, who does not dare to step into a public square without security... but mounts an attack on my family”.

“It's a crime, it's a kidnapping, he's been forcibly disappeared by the dictatorship, this cowardly dictatorship.”

Márquez's wife said her husband, a pilot, had nothing to do with politics and had only accompanied his nephew on the flight out of concern for his safety.

She said her husband had been carrying a “protective vest”, which she said had been justified in light of the attacks that supporters of Guaidó and reporters had suffered as they welcomed him at the airport.