Self-ex­iled Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Ed­mun­do González, who claims to have de­feat­ed Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in last year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, said his son-in-law was kid­napped Tues­day in Venezuela’s cap­i­tal.

González, who was trav­el­ing in the Unit­ed States, said Rafael Tu­dares was kid­napped while on his way to drop off González’s two grand­chil­dren at school in Cara­cas.

In a post on X, González said “hood­ed men, dressed in black” in­ter­cept­ed the ve­hi­cle and loaded Tu­dares “in­to a gold-col­ored van.” He did not say what hap­pened to his 6- and 7-year-old grand­chil­dren.

The kid­nap­ping oc­curred de­spite a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in po­lice and mil­i­tary pres­ence since New Year’s Day across Cara­cas ahead of Fri­day’s swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for Maduro, who the gov­ern­ment says won a third term in the Ju­ly elec­tion.

The gov­ern­ment’s cen­tral­ized press of­fice did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

González, a re­tired diplo­mat, rep­re­sent­ed Venezuela’s main op­po­si­tion coali­tion in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which he and Maduro both claim to have won.

He left Venezuela for ex­ile in Spain in Sep­tem­ber af­ter a judge is­sued a war­rant for his ar­rest in con­nec­tion with an elec­tion-re­lat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion. In re­cent weeks, he has vowed to re­turn to his home­land to take the oath of of­fice.

González, 75, is tour­ing the Amer­i­c­as to try to ral­ly sup­port for his ef­fort to get Maduro out of of­fice by Fri­day. That’s when, by law, the South Amer­i­can coun­try’s next pres­i­den­tial term be­gins. On Mon­day, González met with U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden at the White House as well as with U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz, U.S. Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s des­ig­nate to be his na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er once he is sworn in on Jan. 20.

González, who has been rec­og­nized by sev­er­al gov­ern­ments in­clud­ing the U.S. as Venezuela’s pres­i­dent-elect, has not ex­plained how he plans to re­turn to the trou­bled coun­try or wrest pow­er from Maduro, whose rul­ing Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela con­trols all as­pects of gov­ern­ment.

González had nev­er run for of­fice be­fore Ju­ly, when he rep­re­sent­ed the Uni­tary Plat­form coali­tion. The coali­tion se­lect­ed him in April as a last-minute stand-in for op­po­si­tion pow­er­house Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do, who was blocked by the Maduro-con­trolled Supreme Tri­bunal of Jus­tice from run­ning for any of­fice.

Macha­do last week urged sup­port­ers to demon­strate across Venezuela on Thurs­day, telling them in a video mes­sage that Maduro will not step down on his own and they “must make him leave.”

Mean­while, Maduro has asked his sup­port­ers to demon­strate Fri­day.

But it is un­clear whether any­one will heed calls to head to the streets with the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence.

On Tues­day, de­spite be­ing the first day of school af­ter the hol­i­days, chil­dren were nowhere to be seen dur­ing morn­ing rush hour in Cara­cas, and some schools re­mained closed.

“There is ten­sion. As soon as night falls, the city is like a ghost town,” Cara­cas res­i­dent Mari Jimenez said. “We do not feel con­fi­dent see­ing so many po­lice.”

Kid­nap­pings were com­mon­place in Venezuela at the end of last and be­gin­ning of this cen­tu­ry, when crim­i­nals tar­get­ed the wealthy and a thriv­ing mid­dle class. But that type of crime de­creased in re­cent years, as the coun­try’s econ­o­my came un­done and Venezue­lans be­gan to em­i­grate.

Re­cent­ly, peo­ple have as­so­ci­at­ed kid­nap­pings with the gov­ern­ment prac­tice of de­tain­ing its re­al or per­ceived op­po­nents with­out fol­low­ing the law. They are seen as part of a cam­paign to re­press an­ti-gov­ern­ment protests that broke out af­ter the elec­tion re­sults were an­nounced.

Elec­toral au­thor­i­ties in Ju­ly de­clared Maduro the win­ner hours af­ter polls closed, but un­like in pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, they did not pro­vide de­tailed vote counts. How­ev­er, the op­po­si­tion col­lect­ed tal­ly sheets from more than 80% of the na­tion’s elec­tron­ic vot­ing ma­chines, post­ed them on­line and said they showed González had won the elec­tion with twice as many votes as Maduro.

The U.S.-based Carter Cen­ter, which Maduro’s gov­ern­ment in­vit­ed to ob­serve the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, has said the tal­ly sheets pub­lished by the op­po­si­tion are le­git­i­mate.

Hours af­ter an­nounc­ing his son-in-law’s kid­nap­ping, González an­nounced he was con­tin­u­ing his mul­ti-coun­try tour with a vis­it to Pana­ma. “On the way to Pana­ma! We con­tin­ue,” he post­ed on X.