Venezuela to investigate Bukele, other officials for alleged detainee abuse
More than 250 Venezuelans held in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison returned to Venezuela on Friday, under the terms of a prisoner exchange agreed with the United States.
Detainees suffered human rights abuses ranging from sexual abuse to beatings, were denied medical care or treated without anesthesia and given food and water that made them ill, Saab said at a press conference.
As well as Bukele, Venezuela will investigate El Salvador's Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro and Head of Prisons Osiris Luna Meza, Saab said, after showing videos of former detainees recounting torture and showing injuries - including a missing molar, bruising and scars - they said were the result of the abuse.
Bukele's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters was not able to immediately confirm the assertions made in the videos. Two of those shown speaking were identifiable as former detainees in CECOT.
The Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador from the United States in March after U.S. President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang without normal immigration procedures.
The deportations drew fierce criticism from human rights groups and a legal battle with the Trump administration. Family members and lawyers of many of the men deny they had gang ties.
The former detainees arrived near Caracas on Friday, where some reunited with their families, but they have not yet returned to their own homes.
Yajaira Fuenmayor, the mother of former El Salvador detainee Alirio Guillermo Belloso, said on Sunday afternoon from her home in Maracaibo that she was preparing him arepas, traditional corn cakes, as a welcome.
"I can't stop thinking of the hunger my son went through. I have a salad ready, some grilled arepas because he loves them, and there is fish in the refrigerator to fry," she said.
The government has said the men will be medically evaluated and interviewed before being released. It has always said the El Salvador detentions were illegal and that only seven of the men had serious criminal records.
The Venezuelan opposition has regularly critiqued the government of President Nicolas Maduro for holding activists and others in similar conditions within Venezuela.
The U.S. said last week that 80 Venezuelans would be released from Venezuelan jails as part of the swap, which also freed 10 Americans held in Venezuela.
Forty-eight Venezuelan political prisoners have so far been released, legal rights advocacy group Foro Penal said earlier on Monday on X.
"We regret the absence of an official list that allows us to verify with more precision," the group said, adding that some lists in circulation have included people not classed as political detainees, people who had already been released and even prisoners who have died. "At Foro Penal we remain in coordination with families working to verify other cases."
The communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment about who is set to be released and whether any of them will be subject to house arrest or other alternatives to detention.
The main opposition coalition in Venezuela has cheered the release of the prisoners.
But the coalition said on Sunday nearly 1,000 people remain jailed in Venezuela for political reasons and 12 others have been arrested in recent days, in what it called a "revolving door" for political prisoners.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
8 hours ago
- BBC News
'My parents were taken hostage in Iran. I need to hear from them'
The son of a couple arrested in Iran has said it is "intolerable" that he has not been able to speak to his parents in more than 200 days. Joe Bennet said the Foreign Office told him he could call Lindsay and Craig Foreman last week, but after a "sleepless night of anticipation" it did not happen. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said they were "deeply concerned" by the case and continued to raise it directly with Iran's government. Mr and Ms Foreman were arrested by Iranian authorities in January while on a "once in a lifetime" trip around the world. They have since been charged with espionage - something the family denies. 'Vague reassurances' Mr Bennet says the family has not spoken to his 52-year-old parents, who are from East Sussex, since they were arrested. "We don't know their condition, their state of mind, or even with certainty that they are alive."All we have had are vague reassurances through officials," he added. Mr Bennet described the situation as unbearable and called directly on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy to intercede on their behalf."It is a weight no family should have to bear," he said. Scottish National Party MP Brendan O'Hara, vice-chair of the all-parliamentary group for arbitrary detention and hostage affairs (APPG), previously told the BBC the couple were "innocent victims of a geopolitical power struggle" between western states and Iran, likening them to "bargaining chips".He pointed to the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian national who was held hostage by the Iranian government for six years to pressure the UK to pay a long-standing, multi-million-pound debt.
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of Trump's cruelty?
The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people's hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted. The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition 'a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain'. For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for 'libertad' from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear. What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage? Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, a powerhouse activist and brilliant organizer, told me: 'It's not decided where we go yet. Which is why it feels tense. What we know is that there's no going back to an old normal because our economic system has failed us and our governmental structure is being destroyed. They're trying to replace what was with this minority rule of disgustingly wealthy humans dictating what can happen not only in this country, but globally. 'We've gotta block and build at the same time. That means confronting both elected officials and the corporations that are lifting them up. We need to make sure that we are gumming up their ability to successfully implement any sort of action, whether it's policy or otherwise, that takes more power and rights and access to life-saving resources away from our communities.' So how do we gum up their momentum; how do we become refusers, artists of disruption, interrupters of their hateful and life-destroying trajectory? How do we clear the noise and fear in our heads so that we are able to hear the call of our inner morality? 'The thing that I love about being non-cooperative and non-compliant with the Trump administration,' Ash-Lee told me, 'is its accessibility: people have all sorts of abilities, all sorts of means, regardless of class, regardless of identity, to find a tactic that fits for them. What keeps you up at night enough to make you active? Trump says we shouldn't ask people for warrants. We demand warrants. When a business puts a 'No Kings' sign up or a 'No Ice' sign in their window, they're not complying. And we need more people to do that wherever they are,' she said, 'whether it's a general saying, 'I'm not gonna command my troops to do this,' whether it's troops becoming conscientious objectors, whether it's us boycotting Target and T-Mobile.' This tyrannical white supremacist landscape is erasing our sense of existence and meaning. Daily forms of rebellion birth us back into our bodies and our purpose. Non-compliance is art, as art is meant to defy the status quo, question the givens, expand the boundaries of knowing and freedom. And as you courageously make your mark of refusal, you carve a path for others to be brave. Non-compliance is praxis, stretching and transforming the muscles of our discontent into impactful and embodied action. There are a multitude of ways that we can make their lives miserable by taking small risks and huge ones. Like folks in California sitting in their cars outside the hotels where the Ice agents are and just lying on their horn for hours. Or people towing Ice vans away that are parked illegally. Or the Harlem baseball coach who knew all his kids were American-born. When Ice invaded the field, he told his kids to get inside the batting cage and stay silent. He said he was willing to die for his kids to get home. 'And non-complying is also filling in the gaps of resources and care that they are taking away. They're already closing rural hospitals where we live because our governor didn't expand Medicaid,' Ash-Lee told me. 'So residents must build an alternative like country people and black folks across the country have been doing on their own accord for decades, if not centuries, creating community spaces where we can both line dance, do some boots-on-the-ground organizing, get your blood pressure checked, get your mammogram in the mobile unit, get your teeth cleaned, whatever. All of those things are not complying.' I think of the man who suggested we all dress in Ice suits with masks and Oakley sunglasses and enter detention centers and free immigrants. Or my white British friend who was in a store in Nevada when Ice invaded and they started harassing Latinos for their identification. He stepped up and calmly asked why they weren't asking for his ID. He asked simply without hostility. He asked it three times. Even though they continued, he momentarily disrupted the trajectory of cruelty and forced them to bring consciousness to what they were doing. Or the Rev Mariann Budde's staring down Trump and his billionaire cronies in the first row of a Washington church in January, calmly and fearlessly demanding compassion for immigrants, refugees and LGBTQ+ communities. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion And this is the time for artists to speak out, to disembed themselves from a fascist system, to place principles over profit and self-advancement. To be what Viet Thanh Nguyen calls 'disagreeable'. Yes, of course there are risks. But at this moment, with the jackboots in the streets and at our door, when each hour another liberty is being erased, and those who speak truth to power are being removed from TV, from universities, from cultural centers, when the cultural platforms are being removed themselves, speaking out is not just an obligation, it's survival. And there are artists beginning to organize. The poet Michael Klein is creating a new podcast calling writers 'to take our language back in writing a way through the various veils of deceit–an act, which in itself, has always been a form of resistance'. Meena Jagannath, a movement lawyer, is gathering artists and activists in salons to deepen our collective investigation and imaginative co-creation. She told me: 'Our charge in these times is to support each other in building protagonism – a sense that we have agency to contest fascist narratives about how the world is and should be. It needs to be a collective, creative and responsive process that takes in what's going out there and alchemizes it into a more expansive imagination of what could and should be.' So in a nod to the late great Mary Oliver, I ask you, what is the one precious, wild creative act you are doing to impede this nightmare? V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- The Guardian
We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of Trump's cruelty?
The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people's hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted. The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition 'a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain'. For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for 'libertad' from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear. What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage? Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, a powerhouse activist and brilliant organizer, told me: 'It's not decided where we go yet. Which is why it feels tense. What we know is that there's no going back to an old normal because our economic system has failed us and our governmental structure is being destroyed. They're trying to replace what was with this minority rule of disgustingly wealthy humans dictating what can happen not only in this country, but globally. 'We've gotta block and build at the same time. That means confronting both elected officials and the corporations that are lifting them up. We need to make sure that we are gumming up their ability to successfully implement any sort of action, whether it's policy or otherwise, that takes more power and rights and access to life-saving resources away from our communities.' So how do we gum up their momentum; how do we become refusers, artists of disruption, interrupters of their hateful and life-destroying trajectory? How do we clear the noise and fear in our heads so that we are able to hear the call of our inner morality? 'The thing that I love about being non-cooperative and non-compliant with the Trump administration,' Ash-Lee told me, 'is its accessibility: people have all sorts of abilities, all sorts of means, regardless of class, regardless of identity, to find a tactic that fits for them. What keeps you up at night enough to make you active? Trump says we shouldn't ask people for warrants. We demand warrants. When a business puts a 'No Kings' sign up or a 'No Ice' sign in their window, they're not complying. And we need more people to do that wherever they are,' she said, 'whether it's a general saying, 'I'm not gonna command my troops to do this,' whether it's troops becoming conscientious objectors, whether it's us boycotting Target and T-Mobile.' This tyrannical white supremacist landscape is erasing our sense of existence and meaning. Daily forms of rebellion birth us back into our bodies and our purpose. Non-compliance is art, as art is meant to defy the status quo, question the givens, expand the boundaries of knowing and freedom. And as you courageously make your mark of refusal, you carve a path for others to be brave. Non-compliance is praxis, stretching and transforming the muscles of our discontent into impactful and embodied action. There are a multitude of ways that we can make their lives miserable by taking small risks and huge ones. Like folks in California sitting in their cars outside the hotels where the Ice agents are and just lying on their horn for hours. Or people towing Ice vans away that are parked illegally. Or the Harlem baseball coach who knew all his kids were American-born. When Ice invaded the field, he told his kids to get inside the batting cage and stay silent. He said he was willing to die for his kids to get home. 'And non-complying is also filling in the gaps of resources and care that they are taking away. They're already closing rural hospitals where we live because our governor didn't expand Medicaid,' Ash-Lee told me. 'So residents must build an alternative like country people and black folks across the country have been doing on their own accord for decades, if not centuries, creating community spaces where we can both line dance, do some boots-on-the-ground organizing, get your blood pressure checked, get your mammogram in the mobile unit, get your teeth cleaned, whatever. All of those things are not complying.' I think of the man who suggested we all dress in Ice suits with masks and Oakley sunglasses and enter detention centers and free immigrants. Or my white British friend who was in a store in Nevada when Ice invaded and they started harassing Latinos for their identification. He stepped up and calmly asked why they weren't asking for his ID. He asked simply without hostility. He asked it three times. Even though they continued, he momentarily disrupted the trajectory of cruelty and forced them to bring consciousness to what they were doing. Or the Rev Mariann Budde's staring down Trump and his billionaire cronies in the first row of a Washington church in January, calmly and fearlessly demanding compassion for immigrants, refugees and LGBTQ+ communities. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion And this is the time for artists to speak out, to disembed themselves from a fascist system, to place principles over profit and self-advancement. To be what Viet Thanh Nguyen calls 'disagreeable'. Yes, of course there are risks. But at this moment, with the jackboots in the streets and at our door, when each hour another liberty is being erased, and those who speak truth to power are being removed from TV, from universities, from cultural centers, when the cultural platforms are being removed themselves, speaking out is not just an obligation, it's survival. And there are artists beginning to organize. The poet Michael Klein is creating a new podcast calling writers 'to take our language back in writing a way through the various veils of deceit–an act, which in itself, has always been a form of resistance'. Meena Jagannath, a movement lawyer, is gathering artists and activists in salons to deepen our collective investigation and imaginative co-creation. She told me: 'Our charge in these times is to support each other in building protagonism – a sense that we have agency to contest fascist narratives about how the world is and should be. It needs to be a collective, creative and responsive process that takes in what's going out there and alchemizes it into a more expansive imagination of what could and should be.' So in a nod to the late great Mary Oliver, I ask you, what is the one precious, wild creative act you are doing to impede this nightmare? V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls
