Venezuelan lawmaker Freddy Superlano, a member of the opposition party, is in serious but stable condition after being poisoned in Colombia, his party says. His cousin has passed away.

Voluntad Popular, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, said late on Saturday that Superlano was poisoned at a restaurant in Cúcuta, a city near the border with Venezuela. His assistant and cousin, Carlos Salinas, died.

Superlano and Salinas were said to have been poisoned with Burundanga, which is also known as hyoscine or scopolamine. The drug is used to treat motion sickness and other conditions, but it has also been used in robberies and sexual assaults, leading to the nickname “Devil’s Breath.”

It was not immediately known who may have been responsible for the poisoning. “We wait for the results of the investigation by the Colombian authorities to establish the facts,” the party said in a brief statement.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a supporter of Guaido, said Superlano was poisoned while having breakfast on Saturday morning and called it a “grave situation.” A spokesperson for Superlano said the lawmaker is in serious but stable condition.

Photo of Carlos Salinas: </s> Venezuelan National Assembly oversight committee chairman Freddy Superlano, who was in the Colombian border city of Cucuta to help oversee humanitarian aid shipments into Venezuela, was poisoned along with his cousin, Carlos Salinas, who died, the lawmaker's press office said Sunday.

"In the city of #cucuta Cong. @freddysuperlano and his cousin Carlos Salinas were poisoned and Carlos died, the Cong. is stable, let us pray for his quick recovery," the lawmaker's press aides said in a Twitter post. </s> Freddy Superlano has reportedly been poisoned in Colombia

According to BNO news, Freddy Superlano was poisoned at a restaurant in Cucuta, a city near the country’s border with Venezuela. His party, which is led by Juan Guaido, has confirmed that Mr Superlano’s cousin and assistant Carlos Salinas has died as a result of the same poisoning incident. Reports state Mr Superlano and Mr Salinas were spiked with a substance known as hyoscine or scopolamine.

The drug is said to be used to treat motion sickness and other conditions.

However, it has also reportedly been used in robberies and sexual assaults which has led to it gaining the nickname ‘Devil’s Breath’.

US Senator Marco Rubio condemned the attack calling it a “grave situation”.

In a statement, the party said: “We wait for the results of the investigation by the Colombian authorities to establish the facts."

READ MORE: Venezuela: Maduro accepts aid from RUSSIA after blocking US supplies </s> CARACAS, April 21 (Reuters) - Eight people were electrocuted to death during a looting incident in Caracas, a firefighter said on Friday, amid violent protests against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by opponents accusing him of seeking to create a dictatorship.

The accident occurred when a group of looters broke into a bakery in the working class neighborhood of El Valle, according the firefighter, who asked not be identified. It was not immediately possible to confirm details of the incident with hospital or other officials.

The public prosecutor's office said later on Friday it was investigating 11 deaths in El Valle, adding that "some" victims had died from being electrocuted.

Nine other people have been killed in violence associated with a wave of anti-government demonstrations in the past three weeks in which protesters have clashed with security forces in melees lasting well into the night.

"Yesterday around 9 or 10 (p.m.)things got pretty scary, a group of people carrying weapons came down ... and started looting," said Hane Mustafa, owner of a small supermarket in El Valle, where broken bottles of soy sauce and ketchup littered the floor between bare shelves.

"The security situation is not in the hands of the government. We lost everything here," said Mustafa, who said he could hear the looting from his home, which is adjacent to the store.

Dozens of businesses in the area showed signs of looting, ranging from empty shelves to broken windows and twisted metal entrance gates.

The Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for details.

Security forces patrolled much of Caracas on Friday, including El Valle.

Maduro's government is so far resisting the pressure of the most serious protests in three years as opposition leaders push a series of political demands, drawing support from a public angered by the country's collapsing economy.

Ruling Socialist Party leaders describe the protesters as hoodlums who are damaging public property and disrupting public order to overthrow the government with the support of ideological adversaries in Washington.

"This wounded and failed opposition is trying to generate chaos in key areas of the city and convince the world that we're in some sort of civil war, the same playbook used for Syria, for Libya and for Iraq," said Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal in an internet broadcast at 1:00 a.m.

Opposition leaders have promised to keep up their protests, demanding that Maduro's government call general elections, free almost 100 jailed opposition activists and respect the autonomy of the opposition-led Congress.

They are calling for community-level protests across the country on Friday, a white-clad "silent" march in Caracas on Saturday to commemorate those killed in the unrest, and a nationwide "sit-in" blocking Venezuela's main roads on Monday.

Daniela Alvarado, 25, who sells vegetables in the El Valle area, said the looting on Thursday night began after police officers fired tear gas and buckshot at demonstrators blocking a street with burning tires.

"People starting looting the businesses and yelling that they were hungry and that they want the government out," said Alvarado. "We're afraid (the stores) are going to run out of everything, that tomorrow there won't be any food."

Separately, a man was killed by a gunshot in the Caracas slum of Petare on Thursday night, municipal mayor Carlos Ocariz said on Friday.

The OPEC nation's economy has been in free-fall since the collapse of oil prices in 2014. The generous oil-financed welfare state created by late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, has given way to a Soviet-style economy marked by consumer shortages, triple-digit inflation and snaking supermarket lines.

Many Venezuelans say they have to skip meals in order to feed their children.

Public anger at the situation spilled over last month when the Supreme Court, which is seen as close to the government, briefly assumed the powers of the Congress. The protests were further fueled when the government barred the opposition's best-known leader, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, from holding public office. (Additional reporting by Carlos Garcia and Brian Ellsworth; Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer and Frances Kerry) </s> The United Nations has said it will investigate the death in custody of an opposition councillor jailed by Venezuela’s intelligence police on allegations that he plotted to kill President Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuelan officials said that Fernando Albán killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency’s headquarters. But opposition leaders denied the official version.

Ravina Shamdasani with the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Venezuelan officials were obligated to ensure Albán’s safety while in their custody. The investigation into his death will be part of the UN’s wider investigation of alleged human rights abuses, she said.

“We are concerned about news of his death,” Shamdasani said. “We do indeed call for a transparent investigation to clarify the circumstances.”

Albán, 56, was taken into custody on Friday at Caracas’s international airport upon arriving from New York, according to his lawyer. He was in the US accompanying other members of his First Justice party for meetings with foreign dignitaries attending the United Nations general assembly.

A few dozen of Albán’s supporters gathered outside the police building yelling “Maduro killer!” contending that he had been murdered.

“There’s no doubt this was an assassination,” the opposition leader Julio Borges said in a video from exile in neighbouring Colombia, without providing evidence of his claim. “The only thing left for this government is torture, violence and destruction.”

While Venezuelans last year saw dozens of youths killed in violent street battles with security forces, the death of activists or government opponents while in state custody is a fate more associated with the far deadlier, rightwing dictatorships that dominated much of South America in the 1970s.

The opposition claims that more than 100 Venezuelans opposed to Maduro are being held as “political prisoners”, some for more than four years, with little access to the outside world and their legal rights routinely trampled on. The government denies they are political prisoners.

Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro survives apparent assassination attempt Read more

Borges, who led the delegation to the UN, said Albán’s wife told him that her husband had been under intense pressure to testify against him in the ongoing investigation into the alleged plot in early August to kill Maduro using two drones loaded with explosives.

More than two dozen people have been jailed on suspicion of involvement in the plot, which Maduro claims was orchestrated by Borges with the support of Colombia and the US.

The chief prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, ordered an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Albán’s death, which he classified as a suicide.

ISpeaking on state TV, he said Albán was in the waiting room of the headquarters of Venezuela’s intelligence police waiting to be transferred to a courthouse when he asked to use the bathroom. He then threw himself from the 10th floor of the building, officials said.

Borges, who said Albán was a personal friend, said the councillor – who represented a district in the Caracas area – was a family man and devout Catholic who would never kill himself.

Albán’s lawyer, Joel García, said his client seemed calm when they met on the night before in the tribunal. García said authorities cannot determine that a death is a suicide without an investigation and he would ask to be present at the autopsy. </s> Caracas - A fifth person died Thursday after being shot during protests against the Venezuelan government, officials said, as tension mounted in a political crisis driven by food shortages.

The 32-year-old man died from a gunshot wound suffered during clashes on Tuesday night in the northwestern town of Cabudare, a spokesperson for the public prosecution service who asked not to be named told AFP.

Socialist President Nicolas Maduro is fighting off efforts to oust him as Venezuela, once a booming oil exporting nation, struggles with shortages of food and medicine.

Dozens of people have been injured and more than 100 arrested since April 6, according to authorities.

Riot police in various cities have fired tear gas and water cannon at stone-throwing demonstrators.

Opposition lawmaker Alfonso Marquina also reported the man's death on Twitter, identifying him as Antonio Gruseny Calderon.

Marquina called him "another victim of the dictatorship."

"My solidarity and condolences for all his relatives and friends. This must not go unpunished," he wrote.

Marquina and officials earlier said a 13-year-old boy was shot dead in protests on Tuesday in the western city of Barquisimeto, in Lara state.

Marquina blamed that killing on so-called "colectivos," armed supporters of the government who the opposition says commit violence during demonstrations.

A 36-year-old man was killed the same night in Barquisimeto, prosecutors said.

Two 19-year-old students were shot by police in earlier unrest, one on April 6 and one on April 11, according to authorities.

Also on Thursday, opposition lawmaker Jose Manuel Olivares said police fired tear gas "point-blank" at demonstrators in the state of Vargas.

"If they think they will scare us that way they are wrong. We will stay in the street!" he wrote on Twitter.

Two other demonstrations took place in Caracas and one in the country's second city, Maracaibo, without incidents, according to media reports.

On Wednesday, scuffles broke out between government supporters and opponents during a Holy Week procession at the Santa Teresa church in central Caracas.

The next major organised rallies called by opposition leaders are set for Wednesday next week.

That is expected to be the next big showdown in an increasingly fraught crisis that has raised international concerns for Venezuela's stability.

The opposition is demanding the authorities set a date for postponed regional elections.

It is also furious over moves to limit the powers of the legislature and ban senior opposition leader Henrique Capriles from politics.

Those moves have raised international condemnation including from the United States and the European Union.

Maduro has resisted opposition efforts to hold a referendum on removing him, vowing to continue the "socialist revolution" launched by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez.

Maduro says the economic crisis is the result of what he calls a US-backed capitalist conspiracy.
Venezuelan opposition deputy Freddy Superlano and his assistant are poisoned at a restaurant in Cúcuta, Colombia. His assistant and cousin, Carlos Salinas, has died while Superlano is in a serious but stable condition in hospital.