The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, confirmed this Friday that the Panamanian political prisoner Olmedo Javier Núñez was released from prison in Venezuela, where he had been detained since June for alleged espionage.
“Back home our compatriot Núñez. Welcome to your homeland. Go ahead!” the head of state wrote on his X account, in a message accompanied by a photo of the man released on a plane.
a week ago, Mulino had also announced the release of Núñez based on “information received” and that he celebrated it, but ultimately it did not materialize, as the Foreign Ministry later reported.
Accused of espionage
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Panama reported at the beginning of January that Núñez was detained on June 13 when He was on a Panamanian-flagged vessel, “intercepted in the exclusive economic zone of Venezuela by members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces.”
“The Venezuelan authorities They accused the crew of an alleged case of espionage. The Panamanian citizen was in charge of maintaining the engines on board the ship,” the Foreign Ministry then detailed.
The crew consisted of nine people: two Dutch, including the captain, three Hondurans, one Spanish, one Indonesian, one Panamanian and one Hungarian.
Núñez’s case was raised before international organizations such as the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization, and was presented before the UN Security Council and the Organization of American States.
Already on October 1, the person in charge of consular affairs of Panama in Caracas made an official visit to Núñez, “during which she was able to talk with him and verify his health condition, information that was immediately transmitted to his relatives”, he added.
The Venezuelan government began a process of releasing political prisoners, highly criticized by opposition forces and international NGOs for its slowness and because precautionary measures are being imposed on those released.
These latest releases have taken place days after the United States attacks on Venezuelan soil, in which Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured.
