CARACAS, Venezuela\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Venezuela\u2019s government Sunday released from prison several prominent opposition members, including one of the closest allies of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, after lengthy politically motivated detentions.<\/p>\n
Their releases come as the government of acting President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez faces mounting pressure to free hundreds of people whose detentions months or years ago have been linked to their political beliefs. They also follow a visit to Venezuela by representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez was sworn in as Venezuela\u2019s acting president after the Jan. 3 capture in Caracas of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro by the U.S. military. Her government began releasing prisoners days later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am convinced that our country has completely changed,\u201d Juan Pablo Guanipa, a Machado ally and former governor, told reporters hours after his release. \u201cI am convinced that it is now up to all of us to focus on building a free and democratic country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guanipa, who spent more than eight months in custody, was released from a detention facility in the capital, Caracas. In the video he released, he appears with an armored vehicle and officers behind him.<\/p>\n
Venezuelan-based prisoners\u2019 rights group Foro Penal confirmed the release of at least 30 people Sunday.<\/p>\n
In addition to Guanipa, Machado\u2019s political organization said several of its members were among the prisoners released, including Mar\u00eda Oropeza, who livestreamed her arrest by military intelligence officers as they broke into her home with a crowbar. Machado\u2019s attorney, Perkins Rocha, was also freed.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go for the freedom of Venezuela!\u201d she posted on X.<\/p>\n
Guanipa was detained in late May and accused by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello of involvement in a \u201cterrorist group\u201d plotting to boycott that month\u2019s legislative election. Guanipa\u2019s brother Tom\u00e1s rejected the accusation and said the arrest was meant to crack down on dissent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThinking differently cannot be criminalized in Venezuela, and today, Juan Pablo Guanipa is a prisoner of conscience of this regime,\u201d Tom\u00e1s Guanipa said after the arrest. \u201cHe has the right to think as he thinks, the right to defend his ideas, and the right to be treated under a constitution that is not being enforced today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s government announced Jan. 8 it would free a significant number of prisoners \u2014 a central demand of the country\u2019s opposition and human rights organizations with backing from the United States \u2014 but families and rights watchdogs have criticized authorities for the slow pace of the releases.<\/p>\n
The ruling party-controlled National Assembly last week began debating an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners. The opposition and nongovernmental organizations have reacted with cautious optimism and with suggestions and demands for more information on the contents of the proposal.<\/p>\n
National Assembly President Jorge Rodr\u00edguez on Friday posted a video on Instagram showing him outside a detention center in Caracas and saying that \u201ceveryone\u201d would be released in the coming week, once the amnesty bill was approved. <\/p>\n
Delcy Rodr\u00edguez and Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke by phone in late January. His spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, in a statement said he \u201coffered our support to help Venezuela work on a roadmap for dialogue and reconciliation in which human rights should be at the center\u201d and then \u201cdeployed a team\u201d to the South American country.<\/p>\n
Machado remains in exile after leaving Venezuela in December. After she was briefly detained in January 2025, she had not been seen in public for 11 months when she appeared in Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.<\/p>\n
Guanipa on Sunday said Machado \u201cexercises undeniable leadership\u201d and is needed in Venezuela along with other exiled political leaders to move the country forward.<\/p>\n
Cano writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARACAS, Venezuela\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Venezuela\u2019s government Sunday released from prison several prominent opposition members, including one of the closest allies of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":576556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[250308,1582,276,110281,250307,250305,4572,2961,224,5337,9105,88788,3546,5332,10656,31590,20644,32322,250306,989],"class_list":["post-576555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amnesty-bill","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-caracas","tag-central-demand","tag-guanipa","tag-hundred","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-month","tag-opposition","tag-people","tag-prison","tag-release","tag-right","tag-today","tag-venezuela","tag-venezuelan-based-prisoner","tag-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116038439421926420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}