Broadly speaking, the political prisoners released in Venezuela are people released from prison in the same way they were deprived of liberty, without due judicial process.
PUERTO PADRE, Cuba – Venezuelan authorities have announced the release with immediate effect of national and foreign citizens imprisoned in that country, and Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, has said that this release should be understood as “a gesture by the Bolivarian government with a broad intention to search for peace,” but it is known, as it has been officially declared, that the freedom of these people obeys a demand from the Trump administration as expressed to US legislators and the press. the secretary of state Marco Rubio.
The international press is divulging the names of those released, who, judging by the facts, roughly speaking, are people released from prison in the same way they were deprived of liberty, without due judicial process, or, contravening all the rules universally accepted in criminal procedure, although critics of the US military operation to capture the accused Nicolás Maduro do not speak of these transgressions of human rights. Thus, at this time, and to this day, we do not know what legal instrument the interim government of the president Delcy Rodriguez and the legislative chaired by his brother Jorge Rodríguez to open the bars to some of those deprived of liberty, since, neither merely does it speak of restitution of detainees, dismissal of cases, pardons, nor remotely of an amnesty, so the legal security of the release of these people is doubtful as long as the statement confirming it does not exist or is disclosed.
It is magnificent, yes, the freedom of all and not just of a group of all the people deprived of liberty, some unjustly used as hostages, and others for criminalizing their ideas and their political actions. But it’s not enough. It is very awkward to open a gate and say to the prisoner: “Now, you can go!” At root, this action of releasing and repopulating fauna in a hunting reserve is immoral and criminal. Even a pardon decree to free all political prisoners in Venezuela is insufficient. It is not enough, in the “search for peace” as Dr. Rodríguez says.
There are thousands of Venezuelan citizens sanctioned for political crimes that not only were they deprived of their liberty, but also, as accessory sanctions, they were deprived of their political, economic and social rights and even exiled, preventing them from returning to their country. But, technically, a person released from prison through a pardon only extinguishes the main sanction and never the accessory sanctions, unless expressly stated otherwise. On the contrary, the amnesty extinguishes the main sanction and all accessory sanctions, including civil liability if so expressed in the law promulgated for this purpose with respect to all crimes that make up that competition.
To achieve a certain and lasting peace, flexible with the past so that it rises strong in the future, Venezuela needs an amnesty that cannot be postponed, peremptory in its roots and its branches, which, except for common crimes and crimes against humanity that are imprescriptible, extinguishes criminal responsibility for any imputation of ideological origin, thus restoring not only freedom but also all civil, political, economic and social rights to all Venezuelans equally. Only then in that nation can we speak of legal security, economic prosperity, democracy and peace, which does not exist where there is no forgiveness, which is not possible without repentance, because where resentment resides, healing does not take root.
