Top Venezuelan opposition leaders taken into custody amid fears of wider crackdowns

Caracas: Masked security forces staged midnight raids on Tuesday to haul away two leading Venezuelan opposition leaders already under house arrest, possibly signalling an expanded crackdown on dissent after widely denounced elections to boost the authoritarian government.

The moves against Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma could intensify the international fallout after Sunday's election that created a new super congress stocked with backers of the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

The vote was decried as fraud by the opposition and prompted the Trump administration on Monday to slap sanctions on Maduro. In a video posted online by Ledezma's wife, security forces are shown apparently dragging the opposition leader from the glass doors of a building.

"They're taking Ledezma!" another voice shouts in the background. A woman screams: "dictatorship! dictatorship!"

Both men were taken to Ramo Verde military prison south-west of Caracas, aides and family members said.

After the election results were announced on Sunday, Maduro gave a bellicose victory speech on national television that included threats to jail political leaders encouraging protests. Maduro also said a "truth commission" would be created to "take parliamentary immunity from the legislators who shouldn't have it."

Authorities only last month released Lopez, 46, into house arrest after nearly three-and-a-half years behind bars. At the time, the government called the decision a humanitarian gesture, citing his poor health, though supporters saw the move as an attempt to reduce international pressure.

In a video posted on Twitter by Lilian Tintori, Lopez's wife, masked security forces in riot gear can be seen in front of what appears to be the family's house, leading a man from the door and putting him in an official car.

They just took Leopoldo from home," Tintori tweeted. "We don't know where he is or where they took him. Maduro is responsible if something happens."

"He was in his pyjamas," she said. "We don't now where they took him. A group of masked men in camouflage took him. We make the regime responsible for his life and physical integrity."

She added, "this is for Venezuela and the rest of the world because they keep violating the human rights."

She said that Ledezma was also taken to the Ramo Verde prison.

"I can say his morale is intact," Oriette Ledezma said. "But we don't know about his physical state. We're not scared. It's more indignation."

Ledezma was previously arrested in December 2015. Maduro at the time said he was part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. In May of that year, he was remitted to house arrest after receiving surgery for a hernia.

In 2013, Ledezma, from the Alianza Bravo Pueblo party, was re-elected as mayor. In January 2017, Maduro created a higher executive post in the city, "Chief the greater state of Caracas", and named a pro-government official to the job.