MCT information Services/Washington

The wife of a Venezuelan opposition leader has made a public plea to US and international leaders, saying her husband had been jailed on trumped-up charges by what she called the weak and frightened regime of President Nicolas Maduro.
At the National Press Club, Lilian Tintori talked about the emotional impact on her family while her husband, Leopoldo Lopez, has been in jail in connection with a range of charges linked to protests against the South American country’s leaders.
“It is very difficult for me and my children,” Tintori said. “It is hard being a single parent. It is challenging feeling unsafe in my own country. ... And it breaks my heart having to explain to my daughter after every visit why her dad can’t come home - and how, in Venezuela, sometimes the heroes are in prison.”
Tintori has a background in television - although in Spanish. She delivered her 15 minutes of remarks in English that was powerful and poised but sometimes halting.
She took questions in a mixture of Spanish and English, with her human rights attorney and her family at her side.
Tintori has been pleading her husband’s case in meetings and speeches around the world.
At the press club event, she brandished a 75-page report that laid out the ordeal her husband has endured - and how absurd the government’s case against him was, she said.
Lopez’s trial is scheduled for this week in Caracas.
He was arrested in February on charges that originally included conspiracy, incitement to commit crimes, public intimidation, setting fire to a public building, damage to public property, terrorism and premeditated aggravated homicide, the report said.
Since February, Venezuelans protesting Maduro’s regime have been met with often-brutal state-sanctioned violence that’s resulted in deaths, detentions and torture, according to political leaders and human rights observers.
US politicians from both parties have urged the Obama administration to intervene more forcefully to help mitigate the violence, but the administration has taken a more cautious approach, saying it doesn’t want to make the situation worse.
Lopez is a former mayor of Chacao, a neighbourhood of Caracas. In his speeches at protests this year, he called for non-violent, democratic change in Venezuela, in accordance with its constitution. Tintori and her attorney repeatedly said that Lopez had called only for non-violent protests.
Media reports at the time and human rights groups said that one key rally was largely peaceful, although some protesters lingered afterward, throwing rocks or concrete at riot police and a government building and setting property on fire.