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Prominent Venezuelan opposition politician detained hours after release

One of Venezuela’s most prominent opposition politicians, Juan Pablo Guanipa, has been detained by security forces just hours after being released from prison, as the South American country’s leaders sent mixed signals about their commitment to political reform after Nicolás Maduro’s downfall. Guanipa, who is a close ally of the Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, emerged from nearly nine months’ detention on Sunday – one of at least 35 political prisoners to be freed over the course of the day. One of Guanipa’s first acts as a free man was to ride across Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, in a convoy of motorbikes to attend a rally outside the country’s most notorious political prison, El Helicoide. Such scenes of political defiance would have been unimaginable until just a few weeks ago, before Maduro’s capture turned Venezuelan politics on their head. “We are going to build a Venezuela of democracy, of freedom, of justice, of pluralism and coexistence,” the 61-year-old former governor told reporters outside the detention centre, adding that he believed Venezuela had “completely changed”. But Guanipa’s freedom was short-lived: just hours later he appeared to have been taken back into custody after being stopped by unidentified armed men. “I want to let the whole world know that my father has once again been kidnapped,” his son, Ramón, announced in a social media video, claiming that he had been captured about 11.45pm on Sunday. “I will hold the regime responsible for anything that happens to my dad,” the 29-year-old added, demanding proof of life. “Heavily armed men, dressed in civilian clothes, arrived in four vehicles and violently took him away,” Machado claimed on X. “We demand his immediate release.” Alfredo Romero, president of the Venezuela-based prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal, voiced serious concern about Guanipa’s disappearance. “So far, we have no clear information about who took him,” he wrote on X. “We hope he will be released immediately.” On Monday, Venezuela’s top prosecutor announced that his office had requested Guanipa’s re-arrest “due to his non-compliance with … the terms [of his release]”. It did not say what those conditions were but some released political prisoners have been barred from travelling outside the country or speaking to the press. Human rights activists say about 425 political prisoners have been released in Venezuela since Donald Trump ordered the controversial abduction of Maduro in the early hours of 3 January. Maduro’s successor Delcy Rodríguez, the former vice-president, used her first major speech to declare a “new chapter” in the oil-rich country, although made no mention of holding fresh presidential elections in Maduro’s absence. Rodríguez’s regime has moved to pass a new amnesty law, seemingly designed to benefit both the victims of Maduro’s dictatorship and some of those responsible for the repression. Observers warn that despite the regime’s recent concessions, they have yet to see any real indication that it is prepared to dismantle the security forces and paramilitary groups responsible for propping up years of authoritarian rule. Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert from the University of North Texas at Dallas, said Guanipa’s re-arrest suggested “a push and pull” was playing out between different factions of Venezuela’s new leadership. Pérez believed Rodríguez and her brother, the powerful national assembly president, Jorge Rodríguez, appeared to favour making some concessions in order to speed up engagement with the United States and the transition to a new form of government, even if it was only a “competitive authoritarian” one. “But there are clearly forces that want to slow it down,” added Pérez, pointing to the feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, and the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López. “It’s an indication that we really are in a very slow process that can easily be reversed,” Pérez said. Guanipa was seized in May last year by “anti-subversion” agents and held in a Caracas prison on charges of terrorism, treason and conspiring with a foreign government. During more than eight months behind bars he saw his son only once. At the time, the opposition politician’s capture was celebrated by Cabello, who many suspect was behind his re-arrest yesterday. Speaking in Washington, Machado called Guanipa’s arrest a “reaction” from part of the “tyranny” that continued to rule Venezuela, despite Maduro’s exit. “What’s happening in Venezuela is a demonstration that we aren’t just facing a criminal regime but also a regime that is terrified of the truth and terrified of its citizens,” she told reporters. At a press conference on Monday, Ramón Guanipa called for the immediate release of his father and the hundreds of other political prisoners still thought to be behind bars. “This must end – and it must end now,” he said.

Italian reporters to protest over boss’s gaffe-filled Olympic commentary

Sports journalists at the Italian state broadcaster are staging protests in response to blunders made by the sports director throughout his commentary on the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. Paolo Petrecca, who was appointed to the role at Rai Sport in 2025, first welcomed viewers to Rome’s Stadio Olimpico instead of Milan’s San Siro, where Friday’s ceremony was held, before mistaking the Italian actor Matilda De Angelis for Mariah Carey and Kirsty Coventry, president of the International Olympic Committee, for Laura Mattarella, daughter of the Italian president. The gaffes were quickly mocked by viewers on social media and seized upon by members of the Italian opposition due to Petrecca’s reportedly close allegiance to Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government. De Angelis joked: “Mariah Carey and I are apparently the same person.” CDR, the internal union representing Rai journalists, said on Monday the broadcaster’s sports journalists would stage protests, including withholding their bylines from their coverage of the Games and striking for three days when the event is over, in response to the sports director’s “disastrous coverage” of the opening ceremony. “For three days we’ve all been embarrassed,” the CDR said in a statement. “And through no fault of our own. It’s time to make our voices heard because we’re facing the worst performance ever from Rai Sport during one of the most anticipated events of all time, the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.” The CDR said the flawed commentary was damaging to Rai, its licence fee payers and to journalists who work for the public service. The statement added: “This is not a political issue, as some would have us believe, but a question of respect and dignity for public service.” The journalists’ union, Usigrai, called the commentary “inadequate”. Opposition politicians claimed the incident was the latest example of alleged rightwing bias at Rai. Sandro Ruotolo from the Democratic party said it represented a further sign of “political occupation and amateurism” at what he called “TeleMeloni”. In an unprecedented action in 2024, news anchors on Rai’s three main TV channels read a statement from Usigrai condemning Meloni’s administration for “turning Rai into a government megaphone”. Before coming to power in October 2022, Meloni often accused Rai of leftwing bias. Rai Sports has been approached for comment.

Two senior Norwegian diplomats being investigated over Epstein links

Two high-profile diplomats are under investigation by Norwegian authorities in connection with their relationship to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Norway’s financial crimes squad, Økokrim, is investigating Mona Juul, who resigned as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq on Sunday, on suspicion of gross corruption while working at the ministry of foreign affairs, it said on Monday. It is investigating her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, a former diplomat and former president of the International Peace Institute (IPI), on suspicion of complicity in gross corruption. Pål Lønseth, head of Økokrim, said: “We have opened an investigation to clarify whether criminal acts have occurred. We are facing a comprehensive and, by all accounts, long-term investigation.” “Among other things, Okokrim will investigate whether [Juul] received benefits in connection to her position,” Lønseth added in a statement. Lawyers for both Juul and Rød-Larsen have said their clients are cooperating with investigators and are confident the allegations will be found to be without merit. The couple, who were part of a small group of diplomats facilitating the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, are the latest heavyweight Norwegians to make the headlines over the Epstein files. The revelations have sent shockwaves through the Nordic nation, chiefly because of the US financier’s relationship with Crown Princess Mette-Marit, but also because of his ties to other notable figures. Økorkrim – the national authority for investigation and prosecution of economic and environmental crime – has already opened an investigation into Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Labour prime minister of Norway, former chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee and former secretary general of the Council of Europe. Appearance in the files does not in itself imply wrongdoing or illegal behaviour. Mette-Marit has expressed “deep regret” over her relationship with Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes against minors, acknowledging “poor judgment”. Released by the US Department of Justice, the files appear to show that Juul and Rød-Larsen’s two children were bequeathed $10m by Epstein and that Rød Larsen was appointed executer of Epstein’s will in 2017 (this was later revoked). It appears from the files that they visited Epstein’s private island with their children in 2011, with Rød-Larsen later thanking the American for the trip and describing the island as “totally unique”. “We all loved it!” Rød-Larsen wrote in an email, before adding: “Mona sends a kiss.” Announcing Juul’s resignation, Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said her contact with Epstein had “revealed a serious lapse in judgment,” adding: “The situation makes it difficult to restore the trust that the role requires.” Juul’s lawyer, Thomas Skjelbred, said a “serious charge” had been brought against his client. He added: “At the same time, she views it positively that the allegations will now be subject to a thorough investigation, allowing the actual circumstances to be clarified. My client does not recognize the accusations made against her.” Juul, he said, a former ambassador to Britain and Israel, will attend questioning with Økokrim this week and that she will cooperate with the ministry of foreign affairs’ inquiries. Rød-Larsen’s lawyer, John Christian Elden, said it had noted the charge against him for alleged complicity in corruption between 2011 and 2018 “centred on an apartment transfer in 2018 and a possible trip in 2011”. Elden added: “He remains fully available to the investigators and is cooperating to the fullest extent practically possible at this stage. Rød-Larsen is confident that once all the factual circumstances have been thoroughly reviewed, the investigation will clarify that there is no basis for criminal liability, and the case will be dismissed.” Rød-Larsen has apologised several times for the relationship he had with Epstein and in 2020 stepped down as chief executive of IPI, a thinktank.

US not trying to dismantle Nato or undermine world order, says ambassador – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Matthew Whitaker, the US ambassador to Nato, has fiercely defended the US against criticism that the US administration’s shift in thinking about its global policies posed a challenge to the liberal international order, insisting Washington was still committed to Nato and free trade – but wanted to “balance” the historical arrangements (12:47). A report by the Munich Security Conference, set to take place this weekend, warned that “most of Europe is watching the United States’ descent into ‘competitive authoritarianism’ with rising concern or even horror, wondering how resilient US democracy really is” and forcing Europe to get more assertive and militarily independent from the US (11:54). The study also warned that the continent was entering “a prolonged era of confrontation, as Russia’s full-scale war of aggression and expanding hybrid campaign dismantle the remnants of the post-cold war cooperative security order,” with Europe no longer able to blindly rely on the US protection (12:01). Whitaker said that the US administration expects European allies “to be stronger and to share the burden of European security with the United States and ultimately take over the conventional defence of the European continent” (13:17). But Whitaker dismissed the suggestion, first floated by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the US has set a new deadline for peace talks on Ukraine (13:23). The conference taking place this weekend will see some 70 heads of state and government, more than 140 government ministers, and more than 40 heads of international organisations, the organisers said (12:18, 13:40). In other news, The European Union, the UK, the UN, and rights groups have condemned the sentencing of the pro-democracy activist and publisher Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has been jailed for 20 years in Hong Kong for national security convictions that critics say are politically motivated (9:42, 10:21). US secretary of state Marco Rubio also called for Lai to be granted “humanitarian parole” as he protested against the sentence (15:57). Elsewhere, Europe is making slow progress towards reviving its weak economy, a thinktank has reported ahead of an EU summit focused on the waning economic power of the continent (16:18). Nato is expected to launch a mission in the coming days that could boost its surveillance and military assets in the Arctic, following tensions between US president Donald Trump and European allies over Greenland, Reuters reported (15:05, 15:07). The moderate socialist António José Seguro won a resounding victory in the second round of the Portuguese presidential election on Sunday, triumphing over his far-right opponent, André Ventura, whose Chega party still managed to take a record share of the vote (10:38). Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi has warned this morning that Ukraine faces “one of the most challenging electricity situations in the past four years” as it nears the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian aggression later this month (9:42). Russia’s military is scrambling to find alternatives to Starlink satellite internet after access to the network was curtailed, disrupting a key communications system that its forces had been using illicitly on the battlefield in Ukraine (14:29). Nine officers from the French riot police have gone on trial in Paris accused of beating peaceful protesters who were sheltering from teargas during the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests) anti-government demonstrations in 2018. Meanwhile, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has visited a Wine Paris trade show, telling producers there that their business was a part of “France’s way of life,” as he posed with a bottle labelled “For Sure,” a reference to his recent viral moment at the World Economic Forum in Davos (16:51). And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Iran arrests leading reformists close to the country’s president

The head of Iran’s Reformists Front, the organisation instrumental in securing the election of the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in a move that is likely to exacerbate tensions over the handling of recent street protests. Azar Mansouri, the secretary general of the Islamic Iran People party, had expressed deep sorrow at protesters’ deaths, and said nothing could justify such a catastrophe. She had not in public called for the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to resign. In what looked like a decisive roundup of the key reformist figures outside government, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, the head of the front’s political committee, and Mohsen Aminzadeh, a deputy foreign minister under the former president Mohammad Khatami, were also arrested. Further arrests were made on Monday including of Hossein Karroubi, the son of Mehdi Karroubi, a past reformist presidential candidate who spent years under house arrest. Mehdi Karroubi had said Iran’s plight was the direct result of Khamenei’s destructive domestic and international politics, but the IRGC has alleged his son was the “inciter, compiler, and publisher of this destabilising statement”. At least two other prominent figures in the Reformists Front, an umbrella group of as many as 27 reformist factions, have been told to appear at the prosecutor’s office in Evin jail on Tuesday. The moves seem designed to prevent the spread of criticism of the way the security services handled the protests. The official government death toll is 3,000, but others put the figure substantially higher. In a call for Mansouri to be released, the National Unity party condemned what it described as “security confrontations with well-known peaceful and non-violent forces that had pursued their activities within the framework of the law, especially at a time when the country faces external threats and serious internal challenges”. The prosecutors’ office in Tehran claimed those arrested had made every effort to “justify the actions of the terrorists’ infantry”, and stated they were acting in league with the US and Israel. They were also accused of “targeting national unity, taking a stance against the constitution, promoting surrender, perverting political groups and creating secret subversive mechanisms”. Justifying the unprecedented crackdown, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the judiciary, said: “Those who issue statements against the Islamic Republic from within are in agreement with the Zionist regime and America.” He described the people who issued the statement as “wretched and miserable” and threatened they would “suffer losses”. In a statement last week, Mansouri said: “We will not allow the blood of these dear ones to be consigned to oblivion or the truth to be lost in the dust. Pursuing your rights and striving to clarify the truth is the human duty of us all. And with all our being, we declare our disgust and anger toward those who, ruthlessly and recklessly, dragged the youth of this land into earth and blood. “No power, no justification and no time can sanitise this great catastrophe,” she added. Mansouri has not supported foreign interventions. Her seizure follows the arrest of four other Iranian human-rights defenders who had signed a statement backed by 17 prominent activists demanding a “free, transparent referendum” to establish a new, democratic government in Iran. Three signatories were initially arrested – Vida Rabbani, Abdollah Momeni and Mehdi Mahmoudian – but it appeared a fourth signatory, Dr Ghorban Behzadian-Nejad, a senior adviser to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the reformist prime minister, was also arrested. The statement from the 17 read: “The mass killing of justice seekers who courageously protested this illegitimate system was an organised state crime against humanity.” The arrests come as Iranian leaders maintain a hard line ahead of expected talks on its nuclear programme. Separately, Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel peaceprize winner arrested 59 days ago, was given a new seven-year jail sentence. She was briefly allowed to speak to her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, on Sunday for the first time. She revealed she had been transferred to hospital but had been then sent back to jail before her treatment was complete. Pezeshkian has set up an inquiry into the protests, but it is unlikely to be critical of the IRGC, and the arrests of his former supporters show how little influence he wields over the key decision-makers in the government, a point that will be underlined if he remains silent about the arrest of his backers. On a turnout of 49.7%, Pezeshkian won the presidency in June 2024 with 16.4m votes, decisively defeating his rival, Saeed Jalili, with 13.5m votes, yet Pezeshkian has struggled to use his mandate. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has brought forward a trip to Washington to lobby President Trump to include Iran’s missile programme in the talks under way between the US and Iran. The talks in Muscat mediated by Oman that started on Friday are due to recommence this week, and Trump has said he is willing for the talks to focus solely on curtailing Iran’s nuclear programme, a position that alarms the Israelis and some in the Republican party.

French riot officers go on trial accused of beating gilets jaunes protesters

Nine officers from the French riot police have gone on trial in Paris accused of beating peaceful protesters who were sheltering from teargas during the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests) anti-government demonstrations in 2018. The case at Paris’s criminal court is one of the biggest trials over alleged police violence during the unrest in 2018 and 2019, when hundreds of thousands of protesters in fluorescent jackets took to the streets over rising fuel taxes in what morphed into broader anti-government protests against the president, Emmanuel Macron. The Paris public prosecutor had requested a criminal trial, noting that some riot police officers “armed with batons and shields” had “repeatedly struck non-hostile demonstrators” who were on the ground or “trying to come out with their hands raised”. The officers are charged with aggravated intentional violence by a person holding public authority. If found guilty they face up to seven years in prison and a €100,000 (£87,000) fine. The accused are expected to argue that they were operating under extreme stress and “insurrectional” conditions, after hours of being targeted with projectiles by rioters. The nine officers from the CRS riot police division based in Chalon-sur-Saône are alleged to have entered a Burger King near Paris’s Arc de Triomphe on Saturday 1 December 2018, where non-violent protesters and some journalists had gone to shelter from teargas outside. The restaurant was closed but protesters had forced its doors as they struggled for breath. The court heard that riot police received an order to evacuate the Burger King as fast as possible. Video evidence shown in court indicated some people put their hands up immediately when police entered to show they were not hostile. But officers kicked or used batons to beat protesters on the body or head, some of whom were on the floor. One person received 27 blows from six different officers. Some protesters were heard screaming: “We’re going to die.” The court heard that the alleged beatings took place on the third Saturday of the gilets jaunes protests, when more than 5,000 people had demonstrated on the streets of Paris. That day, masked men on the edge of the protests had scrawled anti-Macron graffiti over the Arc de Triomphe and some burst into the monument, smashing up its lower floors before climbing on to the roof. Cars had been torched and bank frontages set alight as some masked protesters fought running battles with police. There were 318 arrests that day and 263 people injured, including 23 police. It was considered by authorities as “potentially the hardest day in maintaining order and dealing with demonstrators”, the court heard. Manon, 35, who sheltered in the Burger King with her husband as they vomited after being teargassed, told Le Parisien before the trial opened that the riot police had “hit and hit, it didn’t stop”. Arié Alimi, a lawyer for two victims, said the case was a big moment in the gilets jaunes movement and illustrated the “brutalisation” of policing. Laurent-Franck Liénard, defending the officers, said context was important and that day “my clients were faced with hundreds and hundreds of demonstrators with an extraordinary level of violence”. The officers arrived in court in uniform bearing badges and insignia, which the judge ordered them to remove. They returned in plain white shirts. Police tactics towards gilets jaunes demonstrators came under scrutiny after official figures showed at least 2,500 protesters were wounded during the unrest, which continued each Saturday for a year. About 1,800 police officers suffered injuries. Activists said 24 protesters lost an eye and five lost a hand because of police weapons. In December 2019, a CRS officer received a two-month suspended sentence for wilful violence, after he was filmed throwing a paving stone at a protester during gilets jaunes protests earlier that year.

Chinese technology underpins Iran’s internet control, report finds

Iran’s architecture of internet control is built on technologies from China, according to an analysis published by a British human rights organisation. The report by Article 19 says the technologies include facial recognition tools used on Uyghurs in western China and a Chinese alternative to the US-based GPS system, BeiDou. The report outlines the policies and imported hardware behind the growth of Iran’s fine-tuned censorship regime, which allowed authorities to almost entirely cut off its 93 million people from the global internet during the height of January’s anti-government protests. The internet blackout has helped to obscure grave human rights violations, including mass killings. The death toll from the protests is still being reckoned. Iran’s internet is still not back to where it was. Rather, a patchy censorship regime appears to be allowing users sporadic access. The capabilities that underpin this blackout are the culmination of a decades-long project, one that involved the collaboration of Chinese authorities. Iran and China’s infrastructure contracts have been guided by a shared vision of “cyber sovereignty” – the idea that a state should have absolute control over the internet within its borders, says the report. “A really significant turning point in the evolution of digital authoritarianism in China and Iran was 2010, when both countries started to make more significant steps towards a national internet,” said Michael Caster, the report’s author. According to the report, Chinese companies have supplied Iran with several key categories of surveillance technologies including internet-filtering equipment from telecoms companies such as Huawei and ZTE and surveillance technologies from camera-makers Hikvision and Tiandy. Researchers at the Outline Foundation and Project Ainita said there was a third category of equipment, manufactured by smaller providers in China. These tools are largely unknown and have “alarming” capabilities – meaning that it is difficult for researchers to know exactly how Iranian authorities can surveil users. “They are getting all this widely available technology, and they are curating it and weaponising it for censorship and surveillance in very creative ways,” said Caster. “There’s an incentive to not be transparent about a lot of this. The question about what is happening now in terms of Chinese tools in Iranian infrastructure is murky.” Iran’s contracts with Chinese technology companies include several with the Tiandy, which provides facial recognition tools and bills itself as “No. 7 in the surveillance field”. It supplies branches of the Revolutionary Guards and Iran’s armed forces. ZTE and Huawei, meanwhile, have offered deep packet inspection (DPI) technologies to Iranian authorities – tools that allow the extensive monitoring of internet traffic. These have been used in China to prevent citizens from accessing websites discussing Tiananmen Square or Tibet, for example, although they also have uses that go beyond censorship. Iran is not the only customer of these tools. Last year, a series of reports documented how a little-known group of Chinese companies has sold sophisticated censorship systems to Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. That company Geedge Networks sells middleboxes – devices that sit on network cables – that allow governments, in theory, to individually sift through a user’s internet activity. However, the actual capabilities of these tools is unclear, said Jurre van Bergen, a researcher at Amnesty International. “It’s pretty hard to find out what these deep packet inspections actually do from these providers.” “While they could do deep packet inspection to block certain apps or VPN protocols from working, it might be cheaper to just block certain domain names, to block certain functionalities or make websites unreachable.” A Hikvision spokesperson said: “Hikvision exited the Iranian market eight years ago and does not sell its products in the country. The company builds and continuously improves a robust and well-established global trade compliance management framework to help ensure its products and operations comply with all applicable laws and regulations.” ZTE said it ceased operations in Iran in 2016. The other companies mentioned in the Article 19 report have also been approached for comment.