Seven Americans have been released in a prisoner swap between the US and Venezuela.
(dpa) Several Americans imprisoned in Venezuela for years have been released in exchange for two relatives of President Nicolás Maduro who have been convicted in the United States. Most of the seven released are former oil managers from Citgo, the American subsidiary of the state-owned Venezuelan oil company PDVSA. They were arrested in Venezuela in 2017 and sentenced to long prison terms in a corruption trial in 2020. Six of those released are American citizens and one is a permanent resident of the United States.
President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the release on Saturday. The exchange for two of Maduro’s wife’s nephews was confirmed by a White House official.
The American government criticized the trial against the “Citgo 6” as politically motivated and unfair. One of the six Citgo managers originally convicted was released in March after talks between the US and Venezuela. At the time, observers saw the release as a goodwill gesture on the part of the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President Maduro.
For years, the United States had been trying to get the five remaining Citgo managers released, as well as other Americans, including a Navy veteran. When it became clear that this could be achieved by pardoning Maduro’s wife’s two nephews, President Biden made the “difficult decision” to grant the wish, said the senior official of the American government. He emphasized that such steps would remain a rare exception: “To assume otherwise would be a wrong conclusion.”
The nephews of Venezuela’s First Lady Cilia Flores were each sentenced to 18 years in prison for drug trafficking in the United States in 2017. Franqui Flores and Efraín Campo were arrested in Haiti in 2015 and extradited to the United States for attempting to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the United States. According to the investigators, they were not particularly skillful. At the time, given the tensions between Washington and Caracas, Maduro said it was a political action by the United States to attack his wife.