Tyranny looms

IT WAS a military-style operation, of the kind you would mount to collar a dangerous drug lord. On the afternoon of February 19th dozens of agents of Venezuela’s state security service, Sebin, armed with automatic weapons and a sledgehammer (but no arrest warrant) burst into a suite of offices on the sixth floor of a tower block in El Rosal, a normally quiet district of Caracas. Their quarry was not some villain but the 59-year-old mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Antonio Ledezma. After a day and a half in Sebin’s custody he was sent to a military jail to await trial on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president.

This is not the first time the left-wing regime has locked up a prominent member of the opposition. Among Mr Ledezma’s fellow inmates is Leopoldo López, who spent much of last year in solitary confinement on similar charges. The arrest of an elected mayor (though one whose powers had been much reduced by the government) marks a clear escalation in the regime’s campaign of repression.