Leopoldo Lopez was jailed shortly after Venezuela’s anti-government protests began. “In Venezuela there’s no justice. And he represents that,” one activist said.
BuzzFeed
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela — The prison where Leopoldo Lopez is being held sits high on the mountainside above the small city of Los Teques, about an hour away from the Caracas streets where he gave himself up to authorities over a month ago.
The Ramo Verde prison is a military prison — but it has a history of housing political prisoners, and it’s where Lopez, the charismatic Harvard-educated Venezuelan opposition leader and head of the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, is jailed on charges of conspiracy and arson (other charges for murder and terrorism have been dropped). Lopez, who turned himself in during a dramatic protest on Feb. 19, has had to sit out most of the demonstrations he spearheaded at the beginning of Venezuela’s current period of anti-government unrest. His isolation has put him out of the game at a critical time. Venezuela’s protesters are still out in the streets, but six weeks of demonstrations have produced no results, and the man who has championed the long shot “La Salida” (the exit) strategy of demanding that President Nicolas Maduro resign is not there to see whether it might work.
