The attorney general of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, denied this Thursday that there is slowness in the process of releases of political prisoners which, he assured, began on December 24 and has continued during this month of January to carry out, so far, “more” than 400 measures.
“I deny any campaign contrary to this action of the Venezuelan State, binding on the releases, which I repeat, have been requested by the Public Ministry, have been agreed upon by the courts and the respective release tickets have been issued to finally release those who correspond,” said Saab in an act of the Public Ministry goes to your community broadcast by Globovision.
The prosecutor indicated that these more than 400 measures “have been completed” as recorded in the minutes of the Prosecutor’s Office, the courts and the files of each case.
“So saying that this has not happened is part of this dirty war against democracy,” he added.
The prosecutor indicated that this process of releases is part of a “State policy” that was born with Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) and continued by Nicolás Maduro and now the acting president Delcy Rodríguez, as part of a “policy of humanization, of reconciliation.”
“It is something constant, review all the open sources and you will see that it has been a constant of the Venezuelan State to grant these measures,” he noted, while saying that this process will be maintained.
Numbers of releases in dispute and family despair
Relatives of political prisoners in Venezuela stated this Thursday that their “despair”, hope and uncertainty increases every day, in the midst of a release process initiated ten days ago by the government without detailing the total number of beneficiaries or publishing a list.
“We are not calm. Every day our despair and uncertainty increases,” Mayerlin González, wife of Ebro Leonardo Delgado Briceño, who worked at the Cardón refinery and has been imprisoned since July 2022, told Efe.
Non-governmental organizations and the majority opposition say that so far they have verified between 154 and 170 releases since January 8, when the president of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, announced a “significant number” of releases, without specifying identities or the conditions of these measures.
During the early hours of this Thursday, the lawyer was released from El Rodeo I Rafael Tudaresson-in-law of opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, after 380 days of confinement.
