Leopoldo López

Profile Overview

Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza (born 29 April 1971) is a Venezuelan opposition leader. López was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas in the regional elections held in July 2000. He is the National Coordinator of the political party, Voluntad Popular, which he founded in 2009. He is a Venezuelan politician, economist, and sociologist.
Administrative sanctions were imposed on López by Venezuela's Comptroller's Office in 2004, disqualifying him from holding public office for six years (beginning in 2008, at the completion of his term as mayor, until 2014), following allegations of nepotism and misappropriation of funds. Opposition groups in Venezuela criticized these charges as fabricated. López supporters say he was never charged with a crime, tried, or allowed to rebut the allegations; he sued Venezuela and his case was reviewed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which issued a unanimous ruling in his favor. The ruling was ignored by Venezuelan officials.
During the crisis in Venezuela, he called for protests in February 2014. He was arrested on 18 February 2014 and charged with arson and conspiracy; murder and terrorism charges were dropped. Human rights groups expressed concern that the charges were politically motivated. His imprisonment in Ramo Verde was controversial; the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for the release of those arrested in connection with the protests. Opinion polls in late 2014 showed that López had become one of the most popular politicians in Venezuela following his arrest. In September 2015, he was found guilty of public incitement to violence through supposed subliminal messages, being involved with criminal association, and was sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison.
The European Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and several human rights organizations have condemned the arrest and defined it as politically motivated. Several figures involved with his trial later declared that they were pressured by the Venezuelan government to detain López. Franklin Nieves, the prosecutor that accused him, called the judicial process a "farce" and said that Nicolás Maduro pressured him and Public Ministry superiors to defend "false evidence" against López. Ralenis Tovar, the judge that signed the arrest warrant against Leopoldo, declared that she signed the warrant because she felt scared after being threatened with becoming a "second Lourdes Afiuni judge". Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz said that she was pressured by Diosdado Cabello to accuse López of the deaths of Bassil Da Costa and Juan Montoya.
He was later transferred to house arrest on 8 July 2017 after being imprisoned for over three years. On 1 August 2017 he was taken from his home by SEBIN agents and was briefly imprisoned once again in Ramo Verde. Since then, López returned home and remained under house arrest from 5 August 2017 until it was reported that López had been released on 30 April 2019, in the wake of the 2019 Venezuelan uprising. As the former attempt to overthrow Maduro's government fell apart, López took refuge as a guest in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. He fled Venezuela in October 2020.