Venezuela announced that it is releasing ‘an important number’ of detainees in what the congressional president characterised as a gesture to ‘consolidate peace’, or some are now calling it ‘keeping US President Donald Trump happy’.
Five days after the US captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Latin American nation announced that it is releasing “an important number” of detainees in what the congressional president characterised as a gesture to “consolidate peace”, or some are now calling it ‘keeping US President Donald Trump happy’.
According to The Guardian, former opposition candidate Enrique Márquez was among those released from prison. “It’s all over now,” Márquez said in a video taken by a local journalist who accompanied him and his wife, as well as another opposition member, Biagio Pilieri, who was also released.
Meanwhile, Spain’s foreign ministry also confirmed the news that five Spanish nationals, one of them a citizen with dual nationality, were also released and are “preparing to travel to Spain with assistance from our embassy in Caracas”. The ministry called the development “a positive step in the new phase Venezuela is entering.”
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told the public broadcaster RNE that the dual national being released was Rocío San Miguel, a Spanish-Venezuelan lawyer, activist and human rights defender who was detained in February 2024. Miguel was accused by the then-Maduro regime of treason, conspiracy, and terrorism in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate the ousted president.
Is this being done to please Trump?
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said Venezuela had “a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they’re closing up”, without elaborating. In recent days, speculation has revolved around the Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya, an iconic structure inaugurated in 1956 as an avant-garde shopping centre and later turned into a prison and torture site under Chavismo.
Following the announcement, Martha Tineo, the general coordinator of the NGO Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón (Justice, Encounter and Forgiveness, or JEP), which monitors political detentions in Venezuela, said she had confirmed that some sections of El Helicoide are being vacated, The Guardian reported.
“But the Helicoide complex is vast. It not only houses the prison where political detainees are held, but also administrative offices of the Bolivarian National Police, and those are the areas that are being cleared … So we might assume that over the coming days – hopefully within a week, or however long it takes – we may indeed see the closure of that immense torture centre, but for now, that is not happening,” she added.
The move was also lauded by Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado. She said that the initiative showed that “injustice” would not prevail in the country. “This is an important day because it shows what we have always known: that injustice will not last forever and that truth, although it be wounded, ends up finding its way,” she said in an audio message published on social media.
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