The China Mail - Venezuela releases detained free-speech advocate

"In the early hours of January 16, our director Carlos Correa was freed," the Espacio Publico NGO wrote on the social network X.

Correa, a well-respected university professor and authority on free speech in Venezuela, was among several opposition figures and civil society activists arrested three days before Maduro was sworn in for a highly contentious third term as president last week.

A politician who ran against Maduro in the July election he is accused of stealing, Enrique Marquez, was also arrested. He is still being held.

Correa's wife said Wednesday that her husband had been brought before an anti-terrorism court last week but that she had no information on the charges brought against him nor where he was being held.

Maduro, 62, defied the world in claiming to have won another six years in power, without providing a detailed breakdown of results.

Only a handful of countries, including Russia and Cuba, recognize him as Venezuela's legitimate leader.

The opposition says its own tally of the results showed a clear victory for its candidate, 75-year-old Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who went into exile in Spain in September after being threatened with arrest.

According to Espacio Publico (Public Space), over 400 newspapers, radio stations and TV channels have been closed down over the past two decades in Venezuela, in a clampdown that began under late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez and intensified under Maduro, in power since 2013.

The Caribbean country is ranked 156th out of 180 worldwide for free speech by Reporters without Borders.

A.Kwok--ThChM