CARACAS — A former Venezuelan Supreme Court magistrate says she was coerced into signing the ruling that kept opposition leader María Corina Machado off the 2024 presidential ballot, after intelligence agents detained members of her family.

Bárbara Gabriela César Siero made the allegation in a video posted October 6. It has prompted calls for an investigation and for Machado’s disqualification to be lifted. Venezuelan authorities have not publicly responded, and her account has not been independently verified.

César served on the Supreme Court (TSJ) for about a decade and was vice president of its Political-Administrative Chamber until 2024. She says she signed the disqualification against her will because her relatives had been “used to coerce me as a magistrate.” César says she did not know where they were held, had no contact with them and was not told what they were charged with.

According to her account, Machado’s defense asked the court on December 15, 2023, to review a disqualification the Comptroller General’s Office had imposed years earlier. The same day, agents of the military counterintelligence service (DGCIM) detained two of César’s brothers and a sister-in-law. César claims she was made to sign draft rulings on December 22 and to ratify them on January 26, 2024. That was after the government announced a plot called “Brazalete Blanco” to assassinate Nicolás Maduro, a case that included her relatives.