The Venezuelan opposition said leader Machado was briefly arrested at the rally

Venezuela’s opposition says its leader María Carina Machado was briefly arrested and then released after speaking at a protest rally ahead of President Nicolas Maduro’s controversial inauguration.

Machado, 57, was “violently intercepted” in eastern Caracas and the motorcycle convoy she was riding in was fired upon, the opposition said, adding that she was forced to record several videos during her detention.

Venezuela’s Information Minister Freddy Nánez dismissed reports of Machado’s detention as a “distraction for the media.”

Maduro, 62, was declared the winner of last July’s presidential election, but the opposition and many countries, including the United States, reject the results as fraudulent and recognize the now-exiled opposition candidate, Edmund Gonzalez, as the legitimately elected president.

Gonzalez fled Venezuela in September and has been living in Spain, but this month he embarked on a tour of the Americas to rally international support.

Maduro’s government has issued a warrant for his arrest, offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Machado, who Gonzalez replaced in the election after she was barred from running, was also targeted. She went into hiding shortly after the disputed election and was last seen in public in August before Thursday’s rally.

Earlier in the day, the UN expressed alarm after receiving reports of arbitrary detentions and intimidation in Venezuela ahead of opposition marches.

He highlighted the arrest of Carlos Correa, head of a press freedom NGO, who was seized by unidentified hooded gunmen earlier this week.

Maduro’s government has sent thousands of police to Caracas, where the government-allied National Assembly plans to swear in Maduro to a third term.

The opposition, for its part, called on its supporters to come to the polls en masse to disrupt the ceremony.

In the city of Valencia, police used tear gas against demonstrators, Reuters reports.

In western Caracas, Niegalos Payares, 70, told a news agency that “I’m not afraid, I lost my fear a long time ago.”

And in the city of Maracay, in central Venezuela, Roisa Gomez told a Reuters reporter that she was “fighting for my vote, which I cast for Edmund Gonzalez. They cannot steal the election.”

Maduro was declared the winner of the presidential election by the government-dominated National Electoral Council (CNE), but the CNE has so far been unable to provide detailed voting data to back up the claim.

Earlier this month in Washington, Gonzalez met with US President Joe Biden, who said Venezuela deserved a “peaceful transfer of power”.

In Panama, González deposited thousands of vote tallies that the opposition had collected in the country’s bank.

These results were key evidence offered by the opposition to show that González, not Maduro, had won the election.

With the help of official election witnesses, they managed to collect 85% of the counts and upload them to the Internet.

Independent observers and media organizations who have seen them say they show Gonzalez beating Maduro by a wide margin.