A major Venezuelan opposition party has said that one of its activists was murdered this week after being detained by security officials in the western state of Apure.

Edwin Santos “was murdered after being abducted by members of the state security forces” on Wednesday, Voluntad Popular (VP) party said, blaming the iron-fisted regime of the leftwing president, Nicolás Maduro.

VP said Santos was found dead on Friday morning on a bridge that had been a focus of his advocacy, after going missing on Wednesday afternoon while traveling in the rural El Pinal district.

“Witnesses in the region confirmed that he was intercepted by state security agents,” the party said in a statement.

It added that it had confirmed on Thursday he was in custody at the headquarters of Venezuela’s military counter-intelligence agency in Guasdualito, a city close to the Colombian border.

Party official Adriana Pichardo told AFP that Santos’s wife had identified his body.

“During the past few months he had fought for his community, denouncing the collapse of the bridge that links Apure with [the neighbouring state of] Tachira,” VP said, adding: “It was on that bridge that he was found dead this morning.”

The bridge collapsed in July following heavy rain.

Writing on social platform X from Spain, where he is in exile, opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia called for justice to be served over Santos’s death.

“Venezuela wants and needs the truth,” said González Urrutia, who on Thursday shared the EU’s top human rights prize with opposition leader María Corina Machado for resisting Maduro’s regime.

Venezuelan opposition activists have been targeted in a sweeping crackdown since the July elections in which Maduro claimed to have won a third term despite the opposition publishing detailed polling results showing González Urrutia winning by a large margin.