CARACAS, Venezuela — U.S. charge d’affaires Laura Dogu has arrived in Caracas to reopen the American diplomatic mission in Venezuela after seven years of severed ties.
The move comes almost one month after a military attack ordered by President Trump that removed the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from office and took him into U.S. custody.
“My team and I are ready to work,” Dogu said in a message Saturday posted by the U.S. Embassy on Venezuela’s account on X. It also posted pictures of her upon her landing at Simón Bolívar International Airport outside Caracas.
Venezuela and the United States broke off diplomatic relations in February 2019 in a decision by Maduro. They closed their embassies mutually after Trump gave public support to lawmaker Juan Guaidó, who claimed to be the nation’s interim president in January that year.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela’s most powerful politicians and a Maduro loyalist, said last month that reopening the U.S. Embassy would give the Venezuelan government a way to oversee the treatment of the deposed president, who is jailed in the U.S.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil said in a message on Telegram that Dogu’s arrival is part of a joint schedule to “deal with and resolve existing differences through diplomatic dialogue, in a foundation of mutual respect and [based on] international law.”
Dogu, who was previously ambassador in Nicaragua and Honduras, arrived in Venezuela one day after the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, announced an amnesty bill to release political prisoners. The amnesty could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons.
The measure had long been sought by the U.S.-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodríguez has made since taking the reins of the country after the ouster of Maduro.
Rodríguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders Friday that the ruling party-controlled National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency.
“May this law serve to heal the wounds left by the political confrontation fueled by violence and extremism,” she added in the pretaped televised event. “May it serve to redirect justice in our country, and may it serve to redirect coexistence among Venezuelans.”
Rodríguez also announced the shutdown of Helicoide, a prison in Caracas where torture and other human rights abuses have been repeatedly documented by independent organizations. The facility, she said, will be transformed into a sports, social and cultural center for police and surrounding neighborhoods.
Rodríguez made her announcement before some of the officials whom former prisoners and human rights watchdogs have accused of ordering the abuses committed at Helicoide and other detention facilities.
Relatives of some prisoners livestreamed Rodríguez’s speech on a phone as they gathered outside Helicoide. Some cried. Many chanted, “Freedom! Freedom!”
“God is good. God heard us,” Johana Chirinos, a prisoner’s aunt, said as tears rolled down her face.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado in a statement said the announced actions were not taken “voluntarily, but rather in response to pressure from the US government.” She also noted that people have been detained for their political activities from anywhere between a month and 23 years.
“The regime’s repressive apparatus is brutal and has responded to the numerous criminal forces that answer to this regime, and it is all that remains,” Machado said. “When repression disappears and fear is lost, it will be the end of tyranny.”
The Venezuelan-based prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal estimates that 711 people are in detention facilities across the South American country for their political activities. Of those, 183 have been sentenced.
The government did not release the text of the bill Friday, leaving unclear the specific criteria that will be used to determine who qualifies for amnesty.
Rodríguez said the “general amnesty law” will cover the “entire period of political violence from 1999 to the present.” She also explained that people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, corruption or human rights violations will not qualify for relief.
Rodríguez’s government earlier this month had announced plans to release a significant number of prisoners in a goodwill gesture, but relatives of those detained have condemned the slow pace of the releases.
“A general amnesty is welcome as long as its elements and conditions include all of civil society, without discrimination, that it does not become a cloak of impunity, and that it contributes to dismantling the repressive apparatus of political persecution,” Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal, said on social media.
The organization has tallied 302 releases since Jan. 8, when National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez announced that the government would free a significant number of prisoners.
The human rights group Provea in a statement called out the lack of transparency and “trickle” pace of prisoner releases over the last few weeks. It underscored that while the freeing of those still detained “is urgent, the announcement of an amnesty should not be conceived, under any circumstances, as a pardon or act of clemency on the part of the State.”
“We recall that these people were arbitrarily imprisoned for exercising rights protected by international human rights instruments, the National Constitution, and Venezuelan laws,” the statement said.
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