Venezuela’s acting president vows to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro

Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez on Wednes­day vowed to con­tin­ue re­leas­ing pris­on­ers de­tained un­der for­mer Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro dur­ing her first press brief­ing since Maduro was oust­ed by the Unit­ed States ear­li­er this month.

Ad­dress­ing jour­nal­ists from a red car­pet at the pres­i­den­tial palace, Ro­dríguez struck a con­cil­ia­to­ry tone and said the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment was en­ter­ing a “new po­lit­i­cal mo­ment.” She of­fered as­sur­ances that the process of re­leas­ing hun­dreds of de­tainees — a move re­port­ed­ly made at the be­hest of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion — “has not yet con­clud­ed.” The re­leas­es have drawn crit­i­cism for be­ing too slow and se­cre­tive.

“This op­por­tu­ni­ty is for Venezuela and for the peo­ple of Venezuela to be able to see re­flect­ed a new mo­ment where co­ex­is­tence, where liv­ing to­geth­er, where recog­ni­tion of the oth­er al­lows build­ing and erect­ing a new spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” Ro­dríguez said in the ad­dress, which last­ed just over five min­utes. She took no ques­tions.

Flanked by her broth­er and Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Pres­i­dent Jorge Ro­dríguez, and In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, she al­so crit­i­cized or­ga­ni­za­tions that ad­vo­cate on be­half of pris­on­ers’ rights. She pledged “strict” en­force­ment of the law and cred­it­ed Maduro with start­ing the pris­on­er re­leas­es as a sig­nal that her gov­ern­ment meant no whole­sale break from the past.

“Crimes re­lat­ed to the con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der are be­ing eval­u­at­ed,” she said, in ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to de­tainees held on what hu­man rights groups say are po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed charges. “Mes­sages of ha­tred, in­tol­er­ance, acts of vi­o­lence will not be per­mit­ted.”

De­spite sanc­tion­ing her for hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions dur­ing his first term, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump en­list­ed Ro­dríguez to help se­cure U.S. con­trol over Venezuela’s oil sales. To en­sure the for­mer Maduro loy­al­ist does his bid­ding, he threat­ened Ro­dríguez with a “sit­u­a­tion prob­a­bly worse than Maduro,” who faces fed­er­al charges of drug-traf­fick­ing from a Brook­lyn jail.

In en­dors­ing Ro­dríguez, Trump side­lined María Co­ri­na Macha­do, the leader of Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion who won a No­bel Peace Prize last year for her cam­paign to re­store the na­tion’s democ­ra­cy.

Af­ter dis­miss­ing her as lack­ing the suf­fi­cient sup­port and re­spect to gov­ern, Trump said he’ll meet Macha­do in the Oval Of­fice on Thurs­day for the first time since Maduro’s cap­ture. The meet­ing is seen as a key op­por­tu­ni­ty for Macha­do to press Trump on her hopes for a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion in Venezuela.

Af­ter a lengthy ca­reer serv­ing as Maduro’s close con­fi­dant and rep­re­sent­ing the rev­o­lu­tion start­ed by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage, Ro­dríguez now walks a tightrope, nav­i­gat­ing pres­sures from both Wash­ing­ton and her hard­line col­leagues who hold di­rect sway over the se­cu­ri­ty forces.

Those ten­sions were on dis­play in her speech Wednes­day, which fo­cused on­ly on the is­sue of pris­on­er re­leas­es. Venezuela’s lead­ing pris­on­er rights or­ga­ni­za­tion, Foro Pe­nal, has ver­i­fied at least 68 pris­on­ers freed since her in­ter­im gov­ern­ment promised to re­lease a “sig­nif­i­cant num­ber” of pris­on­ers.

Foro Pe­nal re­port­ed the re­lease of at least a dozen pris­on­ers on Wednes­day, in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Nicmer Evans. Macha­do cam­paign staffers Julio Balza and Gabriel González, whose de­ten­tions were con­sid­ered to be for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons, were al­so freed on Wednes­day, the op­po­si­tion leader’s par­ty an­nounced.

But it was Maduro who first start­ed the process of re­leas­ing pris­on­ers, Ro­dríguez said, ap­par­ent­ly push­ing back on White House claims that the pris­on­ers were be­ing freed due to U.S. pres­sure. She said Maduro over­saw the re­lease of 194 pris­on­ers in De­cem­ber of last year be­cause he “was think­ing pre­cise­ly about open­ing spaces for un­der­stand­ing, for co­ex­is­tence, for tol­er­ance.”

She claimed her own care­tak­er gov­ern­ment had re­leased 406 de­tainees, with­out of­fer­ing any ev­i­dence.

She did not ad­dress hu­man rights groups’ com­plaints over her gov­ern­ment’s lack of trans­paren­cy and in­stead crit­i­cized such groups as hav­ing “tried to sell false­hoods about Venezuela.”

“There will al­ways be those who want to fish in trou­bled wa­ters,” she said, adding that her speech was as an ef­fort to counter false nar­ra­tives.

Ro­dríguez served as Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent since 2018, run­ning Venezuela’s feared in­tel­li­gence ser­vice and man­ag­ing its cru­cial oil in­dus­try. A 56-year-old lawyer and politi­cian, Ro­dríguez was sworn in as in­ter­im pres­i­dent two days af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion snatched Maduro from his for­ti­fied com­pound and claimed the U.S. would be call­ing the shots in Venezuela. —CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press