The Venezuelan government released at least 80 political prisoners on Thursday, including one with U.S. ties, according to rights groups. The freeing of prisoners around the holidays is a regular event but comes this year amid a broader crackdown on dissent in the country.
The release of the prisoners followed a similar exercise in late December, bringing the number of political detainees liberated in the past month to nearly 200, according to rights groups.
Among the people freed on Thursday was Jonathan Torres Duque, a Venezuelan who had been living in the United States before traveling back to his home country, where he was detained in late 2024.
Mr. Torres was legally residing in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status designation, which has since been terminated by the Trump administration.
Most of the other people released were imprisoned for participating in protests that followed Venezuela’s marred 2024 presidential election, according to the Committee For the Liberation of Political Prisoners, a Venezuelan rights group.
President Nicolás Maduro lost that election decisively, according to several analyses of tally sheets released by the opposition, but he ignored the results and quashed the ensuing protests.
Thousands of people have been imprisoned for protesting Mr. Maduro’s declaration of victory or for taking part in the opposition’s electoral campaign.
Mr. Maduro stepped up the repression in recent months amid escalating tensions with the United States, effectively criminalizing any opposition to his rule. The Venezuelan government has not commented on the prisoner release.
Rights groups estimate that between 800 and 900 men and women remain in prison in Venezuela for political reasons. Rights groups say most have been charged with crimes such as terrorism, incitement of hate and conspiring to overthrow the government for exercising basic political rights. Few have been convicted.
Last year, the Trump administration negotiated the release of 17 Americans and permanent U.S. residents held by Venezuela, including in a prisoner swap for Venezuelans held in El Salvador.
However, as the administration has ramped up a pressure campaign on Mr. Maduro’s government in recent months, Venezuelan security forces have detained several other American citizens. Mr. Maduro has long used detained Americans as bargaining chips in negotiations with Washington.
Venezuela’s main opposition alliance, which is led by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, has called recent prisoner releases a “rotating door” that divert attention from the broader climate of fear in the country.
“What the regime presents as ‘liberations’ are attempts to obtain a political and diplomatic lifeline,” Ms. Machado’s political organization wrote in a statement following a prisoner release in late December. “In reality, what is needed more than ever is greater pressure on the criminal regime to put an end to its repressive apparatus and the horror to which it subjects Venezuelans.”
Rhoda Torres, the mother of Mr. Torres Duque, said the Venezuelan government had accused her son of terrorism and of operating as an “American spy” who was plotting to overthrow Mr. Maduro. His family denies the accusations.
Ms. Torres said on Thursday morning she unexpectedly received a call from her son, now 26, asking her to pick him up after he was released from prison.
“He’s home now,” she said in a phone call from Caracas, noting he was in good health.
Tibisay Romero contributed reporting from Valencia, Venezuela.
Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine.
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