Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
News Article
The New York Times recently reported that two separate negotiations between the Trump administration and Venezuela’s dictatorship have fallen apart. They were aimed at securing the release of dozens of U.S. citizens and residents being held in prison. If the information is true, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was trying to obtain their release in exchange for dozens of Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. in March and are currently in a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
Meanwhile, an envoy of President Trump, Richard Grenell, who has represented the U.S. government in previous negotiations with the regime of Nicolás Maduro, is reported to have offered an easing of oil sanctions, in particular, letting Chevron operate oilfields in Venezuela once again, with the same aim of freeing the Americans.
Whether this is true or not, it reminds us that hundreds of political prisoners are being tortured in Venezuela’s prisons. According to Foro Penal, a well-respected NGO that high-profile human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, often rely on, Maduro’s government holds 932 political prisoners, including four children and more than 80 people with dual citizenship. The figure is constantly revised, however, and it is calculated that more than 18,000 people have been imprisoned for political reasons at various times since 2014.
The last wave of massive arrests came after last July’s fraudulent presidential election, when the opposition proved, with official vote tallies, that it had resoundingly defeated Maduro, who has refused to recognize the results, and large protests took place throughout the country. The man who defeated Maduro, Edmundo González, has since gone into exile, and his son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, who was not involved in the campaign, was detained. He is one of the almost 1,000 Venezuelans considered political prisoners. Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is the most popular politician in the country and who was barred from running against Maduro, has been hiding inside Venezuela for a year.
The government routinely arrests activists, politicians, students, and relatives of opposition figures to terrorize the dissidents, existing or potential. The regime often kidnaps them in the streets, withholds information about their whereabouts from their relatives and the media, and either leaves them to rot in prison without trial or charges or sentences them without the presence of lawyers, relatives, or independent observers. Juan Carlos Guanipa, a 60-year-old politician in hiding and a close associate of Machado, was kidnapped by government thugs on May 23 in connection with regional and local elections, accused of terrorism and money laundering.
Scores of politicians have suffered the same fate in the past year. Dignora Hernández and Henry Alviarez were arrested on March 20 and are apparently being held in El Helicoide, the notorious headquarters of the main intelligence service. Tarek William Saab, the regime’s attorney general, stated that, based on the testimony of another prisoner, they were planning terrorist actions. Biagio Pilieri was kidnapped by masked government agents last August 28. He is a journalist and political activist of Italian origin whose crime was to participate with Machado in the opposition’s presidential campaign. Roland Carreño was arrested last August 4. He had been in prison for political reasons between 2020 and 2023, and if he is receiving anything like the treatment he received then, he is being systematically tortured.
The struggle against Venezuela’s dictatorship, which was already tough, has become even more dire given the wars and geopolitical conflicts that dominate world attention these days. This has deflected the focus from the tragedy taking place under a regime responsible for the exodus of more than eight million people in recent years. It is doubly tragic that, aside from the human rights organizations that routinely include them in their reports and the occasional news item, hundreds of political prisoners remain anonymous outside and even inside Venezuela. Their families feel impotent to bring attention to their cases.
How remarkable that under these horrific conditions, those heroic men and women refuse to bend to the regime’s relentless efforts to force them to turn against the opposition and become government stooges.
