Skip to content

All the news that matters, in plain English.

Latest
  1. Hurricane Polo re-strengthens to Category 5, forecast to make landfall in Baja California Sur on Monday
  2. India delivers right of reply to Shehbaz Sharif's UNGA speech — warns "terrorism by Pakistan will have consequences"
  3. Liverpool reappoint Julian Ward as sporting director after Hughes exits for Al-Hilal
  4. Magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia; no tsunami threat
  5. NYPD arrests two men seen emerging from New York City manhole near Upper East Side hotel
  6. Pro-Palestine Action group plans mass vigil at Labour conference in Liverpool
  7. Pentagon HR breach exposed unencrypted personal data of up to 4 million US military personnel
  8. SpaceX lines up Crew-13 and Falcon Heavy NROL-97 on a same-day Oct 1 doubleheader

World

Venezuela frees dozens of political prisoners after Rodriguez-Trump talks

Human rights groups say dozens of political prisoners were freed from Venezuelan jails on Saturday, days after interim president Delcy Rodriguez met Donald Trump in New York.

By Sarah Whitfield · · 2 min read

Human rights groups in Venezuela say dozens of political prisoners were released from the country’s prisons on Saturday, days after interim president Delcy Rodriguez met Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. The exact total is still being verified.

Venezuelan group Clippve said seven political prisoners were freed from a prison on the outskirts of Caracas on Saturday morning, including Wilder Vasquez, a university student sentenced to five years for participating in a 2018 plot to kill former president Nicolas Maduro. Vasquez has long maintained his innocence, and his sentence had expired in 2023.

Separately, Justicia Encuentro y Perdon said 29 people were released on Saturday, 12 of them on its list of political prisoners, while it continues to verify the rest. The Manila Times reported the group’s figure for the Friday-to-Saturday period as 39 political dissidents freed, including eight women accused of “narco-terrorism” in 2021 and six people accused of working with the United States in a 2020 attempt to overthrow Maduro.

The releases follow Tuesday’s Rodriguez-Trump meeting and a second round of opposition-government talks on Friday backed by Washington. In her UN speech, Rodriguez said Venezuela had “begun a process of democratic transformation” and that elections would be held, without giving a date.

Venezuela’s government made no statement on Saturday’s releases. It denies jailing dissidents but says it is working to release people investigated or convicted of attacking the nation’s institutions to promote reconciliation. Rights groups say around 450 political prisoners remain, including 20 foreigners, and Foro Penal put the figure at 344 as of 18 September.

Hundreds have been freed since Maduro was captured in a US military raid in January and taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges.

Sources

More on this topic: all World stories

Get Flip News by email

This opens your email app — we add you manually. No account, no spam, no third parties.