Jan 22 (Reuters) – Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of Venezuela’s opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, was freed from prison on Thursday after a year behind bars, Tudares’ wife said, the latest such release since the U.S. capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
The 46-year-old lawyer was arrested in January 2025 while taking his children to school in the capital Caracas and accused, like other political detainees, of terrorism, charges their relatives say were politically motivated falsehoods.
“After 380 days of an unjust arbitrary detention and having endured, for more than a year, an inhumane situation of enforced disappearance, my husband Rafael Tudares Bracho has returned home,” Mariana Gonzalez de Tudares said on X.
The former president of the Red Cross in Venezuela, Ricardo Cusanno, posted a photo alongside Tudares, his wife Mariana and the Swiss ambassador in Caracas Gilles Roduit, among others, at the Swiss diplomat’s residence.
Some foreign citizens have been taken by authorities to their countries’ diplomatic missions in Caracas after being released, according to sources familiar with those releases.
The releases of prisoners, announced earlier this month by Venezuela’s government, have moved slowly. So far, rights group Foro Penal said that 151 political prisoners have been released, while families continue to wait anxiously.
VIGILS OUTSIDE PRISONS
Many relatives of detainees – both well-known and lesser-known – have gathered and held vigils outside prisons or have visited multiple detention centers in an effort to find out where their loved ones are being held.
The releases follow Maduro’s capture on January 3 in Caracas and his arraignment in a New York court on narcoterrorism charges. His deputy Delcy Rodriguez has taken the presidency on an interim basis and Venezuela has struck a deal for the U.S. to refine and sell up to 50 million barrels of crude oil stuck in the South American nation under U.S. sanctions.
To the disappointment of Venezuela’s opposition, which says Maduro robbed Gonzalez of a 2024 presidential election, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to prefer for now to work with Rodriguez and other Maduro allies than press for a transition.
Human rights organizations estimate there are about 770 people still arrested for political reasons, while authorities say all are legitimately detained for breaking the law.
Among prominent figures imprisoned are opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa and lawyer Perkins Rocha, both close allies of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado; Freddy Superlano, leader of the opposition party Voluntad Popular; and Javier Tarazona, director of an NGO.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Andrew Cawthorne)
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