Protesters in Venezuela have accused the government of murdering a jailed opposition lawmaker, who the authorities say killed himself.
Crowds were calling for justice at a rally outside the Sebin intelligence agency headquarters in Caracas where Fernando Albán had been held.
The authorities say he took his own life by jumping from the 10th floor.
He had been held over what officials say was a drone assassination attempt on President Nicolás Maduro in August.
This happened when Mr. Maduro was speaking at a military event in the capital. Seven soldiers were injured, officials say.
Attorney General Tareq Saad told Venezuela’s VTV state television that the lawmaker “requested to go to the bathroom, and when there he threw himself off the 10th floor.”
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nestor Luis Reverol gave a somewhat different account of what happened on Monday.
He tweeted (in Spanish): “At the moment he was going to be transported to court, while he was in the Sebin waiting room, he jumped from the window of the building and fell, causing his death.”
The minister also said the lawmaker had been investigated for “destabilising activities directed from abroad.”
Mr. Albán was a Caracas municipal counsellor for the opposition First Justice party.
In a statement, the party said their member “was murdered at the hands of the regime of Nicolas Maduro.”
Enrique Capriles, also a party member and a former presidential candidate, was quoted as saying by AFP: “Those of us who knew Fernando know that he could never have acted against his life.”
Reacting to the news, US Senator Bob Corker tweeted: “Today in Venezuela, Fernando Albán, a young opposition leader, died while in the government’s custody. This is disturbing and the government has a responsibility to ensure all understand how that could have happened.
Mexico couple found with body parts could have killed 20
Police in Mexico are investigating a couple arrested for transporting body parts in a pram in connection with at least 10 murders.
At a hearing following his arrest, the man reportedly confessed to killing 20 women in a suburb of Mexico City.
Investigators have found body parts in the couple’s flat and at another nearby property. They were kept in buckets filled with cement and in a fridge.
Prosecutors say the couple sold the body parts but it is not clear to whom.
Femicides – murders of women – are common in Mexico and often go unpunished, but the gruesome details of this case have caused outrage and triggered street protests in Ecatepec, the poor suburb in Mexico state where they occurred.
Neighbours said that whenever they saw the couple they were pushing the pram in which police found the body parts.
Police stopped and searched them after the disappearance in September of a local woman, 28-year-old Nancy Huitron and her two-month old baby, Valentina.
In the hearing, the accused, whose name has been given as Juan Carlos, confessed to killing Ms Huitron and identified two other of his victims as 23-year-old Arlet Olguín and 29-year-old Evelyn Rojas.
Prosecutors say he also confessed to sexually abusing some of the victims before killing them and selling off their belongings and some of their body parts.
The three victims, all of them single mothers, had disappeared in recent months.
Ms. Huitron disappeared on 6 September with her baby after dropping her two older daughters off at school.
When the two older girls were not picked up from school, a neighbour raised the alarm.
Police have found baby Valentina who, they say, was sold by the couple. She has since been handed to her maternal grandmother.
Investigators say the women knew Juan Carlos and his partner, Patricia, from buying clothes and food from them.
According to investigators, Patricia tricked them into the property by saying she had more merchandise for them to view there.
Police said that when he was arrested, Juan Carlos asked the officers whether he could shower and put on a suit before being paraded before the media “because I’m not a dirty criminal.”
Mexico state is the region with the highest number of disappeared women in the country. Between January and April of this year, 395 people disappeared in Mexico state, of which 207 were women.
The disappearances are mostly concentrated in violent areas where gangs often are in control and police fear to go.
