Hundreds more Venezuelans come forward to register relatives as ‘political prisoners’

Free­dom came too late for Edil­son Tor­res. The po­lice of­fi­cer was buried Tues­day in his hum­ble, rur­al home­town fol­low­ing his death in a Venezue­lan prison, where he was held in­com­mu­ni­ca­do since his De­cem­ber de­ten­tion on what his fam­i­ly said were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions.

Be­fore the ser­vice, a fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion stopped at a lo­cal jail, where his wife re­mains de­tained on dis­put­ed ac­cu­sa­tions.

Tor­res, 51, died of a heart at­tack on Sat­ur­day, just as his fam­i­ly await­ed the gov­ern­ment’s promised re­lease of pris­on­ers fol­low­ing the U.S. cap­ture of then-Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro. His death comes as scores of fam­i­lies like his — who once hes­i­tat­ed to ap­proach ad­vo­ca­cy groups — are now com­ing for­ward to reg­is­ter their loved ones as “po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers.”

Al­fre­do Romero, di­rec­tor of the or­ga­ni­za­tion Foro Pe­nal, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion that tracks and ad­vo­cates for Venezue­lan pris­on­ers, said the group has re­ceived a “flood of mes­sages” since last week from fam­i­lies.

“They didn’t re­port it out of fear, and now they’re do­ing it be­cause, in a way, they feel that there is this pos­si­bil­i­ty that their fam­i­lies will be freed,” Romero said. “They see it as hope, but more im­por­tant­ly, as an op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

The head of Venezuela’s na­tion­al as­sem­bly, Jorge Ro­dríguez, said last week that a “sig­nif­i­cant num­ber” of Venezue­lan and for­eign­ers im­pris­oned in the coun­try would be re­leased as a ges­ture to “seek peace” fol­low­ing the ex­plo­sions that rocked the South Amer­i­can na­tion in the ear­ly hours of Jan. 3.

The U.S. and Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion have long de­mand­ed the wide­spread re­lease of de­tained op­po­si­tion fig­ures, ac­tivists and jour­nal­ists, whom they claim are used as a po­lit­i­cal tool by the rul­ing par­ty.

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment de­nies that there are pris­on­ers un­just­ly de­tained, ac­cus­ing them of plot­ting to desta­bi­lize Maduro’s gov­ern­ment.

‘Pure and re­al kid­nap­ping’

Fol­low­ing Tor­res’ death, Venezuela’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Tarek William Saab said in a state­ment that the case had been as­signed to a ter­ror­ism unit and “was linked to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties de­tect­ed by state se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.” He did not of­fer any de­tails, but the vague lan­guage tracks with past ac­cu­sa­tions lev­eled against re­al or per­ceived gov­ern­ment crit­ics.

Romero ex­plained that of the rough­ly 300 fam­i­lies who reached out, about 100 cas­es so far have been con­firmed as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. Most of those re­port­ed over the past few days, he said, once worked for Venezuela’s mil­i­tary. That is on top of more than 800 peo­ple that the or­ga­ni­za­tion says con­tin­ue to be de­tained for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons in Venezuela.

As of Tues­day, Foro Pe­nal had con­firmed the re­lease of 56 pris­on­ers. While Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment re­port­ed a high­er fig­ure of 116, it did not iden­ti­fy them, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine whether those freed were be­hind bars for po­lit­i­cal or oth­er rea­sons.

“My lit­tle broth­er, my lit­tle broth­er,” Eme­lyn Tor­res said be­tween sobs af­ter his cas­ket, cloaked in Venezuela’s flag, ar­rived at her home for the wake. A few feet away, their grand­moth­er near­ly faint­ed as dozens of peo­ple crammed in­to the liv­ing room to pay their re­spects.

Hours ear­li­er, as a mini­van trans­port­ed the body of her broth­er 267 miles (430 kilo­me­ters) from the cap­i­tal, Cara­cas, to Gua­nare, Tor­res learned that oth­er men linked to the What­sApp group that led to her broth­er’s ar­rest had just been re­leased from prison. She wailed. He did not live long enough to walk free.

Among those who have been re­leased are: hu­man rights at­tor­ney Rocío San Miguel, who im­me­di­ate­ly re­lo­cat­ed to Spain; Bi­a­gio Pilieri, an op­po­si­tion leader who was part of No­bel Peace Prize win­ner María Co­ri­na Macha­do’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign; and En­rique Márquez, a for­mer elec­toral au­thor­i­ty and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

Ital­ian busi­ness­man Mar­co Burlò, who was re­leased from prison Mon­day, told re­porters out­side an in­ter­na­tion­al air­port in Rome Tues­day that he was kept iso­lat­ed through­out his de­ten­tion, which he char­ac­ter­ized as a “pure and re­al kid­nap­ping.”

“I can’t say that I was phys­i­cal­ly abused, but with­out be­ing able to talk to our chil­dren, with­out the right to de­fense, with­out be­ing able to speak to the lawyer, com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed, here they thought that I might have died,” he said.

A rare mo­ment of hope

The small set of re­leas­es over the past few days con­tin­ues to fu­el crit­i­cisms by fam­i­lies, hu­man rights watch­dogs at the Unit­ed Na­tions and U.S. politi­cians, who have ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of not fol­low­ing through on their word of a wider re­lease.

But the rapid po­lit­i­cal shifts in the Latin Amer­i­can na­tion and the dis­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­lease si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly marked a rare mo­ment of hope for many fam­i­lies who have spent years won­der­ing if their loved ones would ever be freed.

Part of the rea­son that Romero said he be­lieved so many peo­ple had not come for­ward is the gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing crack­down on dis­sent since Venezuela’s tu­mul­tuous 2024 elec­tion, which Maduro claimed to have won de­spite am­ple cred­i­ble ev­i­dence to the con­trary.

As mass street protests broke out, au­thor­i­ties said they de­tained more than 2,000 peo­ple. In the month af­ter Ju­ly elec­tions, Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment passed a law – dubbed the “an­ti-NGO law” by crit­ics – mak­ing it eas­i­er for the gov­ern­ment to crim­i­nal­ize hu­man rights groups.

That had a chill­ing ef­fect, Romero said, mak­ing fam­i­lies hes­i­tant to come for­ward—un­til now. —GUA­NARE, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by Regi­na Gar­cia Cano and MEGAN JANET­SKY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Megan Janet­sky re­port­ed from Mex­i­co City.