Rosales, who was for years considered Chavez’s chief opponent, denies the charges against him and insists they are politically motivated.
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Rosales will be taken to the capital, Caracas, where legal proceedings relating to charges that he improperly reported income are set to resume after being interrupted when he fled the country in 2009.
A former state governor who lost the 2006 presidential election to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, Rosales flew in from Aruba just as Venezuela gears up for the December 6 vote. He was expected to appear in a Caracas court later in the day.
The authorities had warned that there was an arrest warrant against him.
Rosales was charged by the Venezuelan Attorney General with corruption in late 2008, accused of “misusing public funds” and obtaining $60,000 illicitly during his term as Governor of Zulia.
He had been in exile in Peru, which granted him asylum on humanitarian grounds after he fled Venezuela – though a few reports indicated he had since gone to Panama.
Rosales’ arrival and detention may help mobilize the opposition in the run-up to the December 6 parliamentary elections, which polls show will be among the toughest ever for the ruling Socialist Party and a test for President Nicolas Maduro.
Rosales had expected to be arrested but returned anyway because he came to believe that “exile is the worst prison”, his lawyer, Jesus Ollarves, said. “He’s coming back now because he wants to be here for that”.
Supporters and other opposition leaders rallied near the airport Thursday. Venezuela’s main opposition groups immediately began denouncing Rosales’ arrest as arbitrary and called it further evidence of a broken justice system.
A number of opposition leaders have also been detained since previous year including prominent opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was found guilty of inciting violence during protests in 2014 in which 43 people were killed.
At the airport was his wife Eveling Trejo, the current mayor of Maracaibo, as well as members of his extended family and party sympathisers.
“Today Manuel sacrificed his freedom for you, and it was not in vain”, she said.
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“He knows that this gesture will put him again on the political scene”, he said.
