Latest news with #VenezuelanGovernment
Washington Post
19-07-2025
- Washington Post
Families welcome Venezuelans released from El Salvador with joy, grief
Angela Leal went to bed Thursday and recited the prayer she has whispered to herself each night for the last four months. She asked God to keep her husband safe, to give him strength and to bring him home. The next morning, she woke to the answer she'd been waiting for: The United States had made a deal with the Venezuelan government to send more than 250 Venezuelans jailed in El Salvador back home. The men deported from the U.S. would be landing on two flights in exchange for the release of 1o American citizens and permanent U.S. residents imprisoned in Venezuela.
Associated Press
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Venezuela frees 10 detained Americans in three-country deal that also has El Salvador release migrants deported by US
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela frees 10 detained Americans in three-country deal that also has El Salvador release migrants deported by US.
Al Jazeera
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Former Venezuelan spymaster pleads guilty to US drug trafficking charges
A former director of Venezuelan military intelligence has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges in a United States federal court, according to the Justice Department, a week before his trial was set to begin. Hugo Carvajal, who served in the country's late President Hugo Chavez's government from 2004 to 2011, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday to four criminal counts including narcoterrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons charges. Federal prosecutors alleged the former major-general, along with other high-ranking Venezuelan government and military officials, led a drug cartel that attempted to 'flood' the US with cocaine. The cartel partnered with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a now demobilised armed group that the US once considered a 'terrorist' organisation, to produce and distribute cocaine, prosecutors alleged. In a letter this week to the defence counsel, prosecutors said they believe federal sentencing guidelines call for the 65-year-old to serve a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison. 'The deeply troubling reality is that there are powerful foreign government officials who conspire to flood the United States with drugs that kill and debilitate,' Jay Clayton, the interim US lawyer in Manhattan, said in a statement. 'El Pollo' Nicknamed 'El Pollo', 'the chicken' in Spanish, Carvajal took part in the failed 1992 coup that lifted Chavez to political prominence and is considered one of the most powerful figures of the socialist leader's 1999-2013 rule. Carvajal then served as a diplomat representing current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government before breaking with him to support the US-backed political opposition. Carvajal was extradited to the US from Spain in July 2023 following a more than 10-year effort by the Justice Department to bring him to US soil. Carvajal's sentencing is scheduled for October.
Reuters
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Venezuela gov't rejects U.S. visa measure, calling it criminalization
CARACAS, June 5 (Reuters) - Venezuela's government on Thursday rejected new U.S. visa measures targeting its citizens, saying they were part of a political "campaign of stigmatization and criminalization". U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Wednesday banning citizens of 12 countries from the United States and partially restricting entry of people from seven other places, including Venezuela. The Venezuelan government has repeatedly warned its citizens against travel to the United States, saying in the Thursday statement there are no minimum guarantees of respect or fair treatment for its citizens there.
