Venezuelan mayor transferred from jail to hospital for emergency surgery
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The jailed mayor of Venezuela's capital has been taken from prison to a hospital where he will undergo emergency surgery for a groin hernia.
Antonio Ledezma was transferred early Saturday after a court granted prosecutors' request to permit his release on medical grounds, according to his lawyer Omar Estacio.
Following the procedure he will be allowed to recuperate at home.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ledezma was treated for the same ailment before his arrest.
The opposition leader was arrested by police during a dramatic raid on his office in February and he has been held at a military prison on charges of plotting a coup against the South American country's socialist government.
The mayor denies the allegation.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ledezma, 59, is among the fiercest critics of the administration of President Nicolas Maduro. The administration ridicules him as "the vampire," a reference to his association with disgraced former President Carlos Andres Perez, who was impeached on charges of corruption and amid a punishing economic crisis triggered by a Washington-backed austerity reforms.
He was being held in a military prison on the outskirts of Caracas along with opposition hardliner Leopoldo Lopez, who was jailed in connection with his leadership of a protest movement that swept the country last year.
Critics of the Maduro administration consider Ledezma and Lopez to be the country's highest-profile political prisoners, and more than 25 former heads of state from Spain and Latin America have called for their release.
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