CARACAS – Venezuela's government on Saturday released some of the thousands of people who were detained during and after deadly protests that followed the July presidential election. The disputed results have earned officials, including President Nicolás Maduro, international scorn.
The individuals left prison a day after the attorney general, who is loyal to the ruling party, announced the review of 225 cases linked to the aftermath of the election, which Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo González both claim to have won. Tearful reunions took place outside prisons in various cities.
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The Venezuelan-based nongovernmental organizations Penal Forum and Venezuelan Prison Observatory announced the prison releases on X. The former confirmed the release of at least 70 people, while the latter said the government freed the individuals under certain conditions, which it did not explain further.
Members of the armed forces escorted down a pedestrian bridge those who were released from the prison in the northern Venezuela city of Tocuyito. Some of the detainees kneeled and raised their arms after going down the stairs. Two detainees helped a third one who could not walk on his own and later collapsed into the arms of a relative as they sobbed.
“My son, thank you, Lord, thank you!” a woman said as she hugged her son with one arm and lifted the other to the sky.
Images shared on social media by the Venezuelan Prison Observatory showed women tearfully hugging loved ones outside another prison in the South American country. The organization described the releases as a “victory” and demanded that all who remain in prison for their roles in the election and activities in its aftermath be freed.
Maduro’s government has come under heavy criticism for the election’s lack of transparency and the repression unleashed in its aftermath, including the arrests of political leaders, lawyers, poll workers, election volunteers and protesters, both minors and adults.
The protests erupted after Venezuela’s electoral authorities declared Maduro had won the July 28 contest and alleged they could not publish precinct-level results because their website had been hacked. At the same time, the main opposition coalition announced it had secured vote tally sheets from more than 80% of the electronic voting machines used across the country, published them online and declared that its candidate, González, had defeated Maduro by a landslide.
The government’s arrest tally included about 2,200 people. Government officials, including Attorney General Tarek William Saab, have strongly defended the detentions, but earlier this week, Maduro called on Saab and judges to ensure “justice” in the event that a case “needs to be rectified and reviewed.”
In September, independent United Nations human rights experts issued a report accusing Venezuela’s government of intensifying the use of its “harshest and most violent” tools of repression following the disputed July election. The report, commissioned by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, denounced rights violations including arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual and gender-based violence by the country’s security forces that “taken as a whole, constitute the crime against humanity of persecution on political grounds.”
Several countries, including Venezuelan allies, have called on Maduro and his government to free from prison arbitrarily detained people and to release detailed election results.
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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.