Venezuela Attorney General Tarek William Saab, ally of dictator Nicolás Maduro, announced on Monday (21) that his office will start an investigation against El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, for alleged torture and cruel treatment against the 252 Venezuelan migrants who were released on Friday (18) from a maximum security arrest in the central American country.
The government of US President Donald Trump, and the Maduro regime reached an agreement to exchange US citizens in the South American country for the return to the Caribbean nation of 252 Venezuelans sent by the US to an El Salvador prison.
The Trump administration had agreed to pay $ 6 million to house them at the Cecot Terrorist Confinement Center Megaprinity. By the agreement announced on Friday, Venezuela agreed to free ten Americans arrested for the dictatorship of Caracas.
In a post at X, Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the deal also included the release of Venezuelan political prisoners, but did not specify the number.
“We decided to open a formal investigation, with the respective number of office hours, with the three designated national promoters, against Nayib Armando Bukele, Sátrapa who violates the Salvadorenha Constitution itself and calls themselves president of El Salvador,” Saab said at the Venezuelan prosecutor’s headquarters in Caracas.
In addition, he reported that El Salvador’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Héctor Gustavo Villatoro, and Deputy Minister and Director General of Criminal Centers, Osiris Luna Meza, will also be investigated.
Saab detailed that these three people will be investigated for the alleged crimes of “torture, cruel treatments, inhuman or degrading treatments, forced disappearance, illegitimate deprivation of liberty and criminal association.”
The Attorney General claimed that Venezuela may initiate this investigation with the “legal status” granted by the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments or penalties, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons against forced disappearances and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“I appeal to the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council, the corresponding bodies of both America and the world to do the same,” he added.
Saab presented several testimonies of the group of migrants who had been arrested since March in the maximum security arrest in El Salvador, deported by the United States on charges of being members of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang.
Young people, who were released last Friday, reported in videos presented by the Attorney General had been victims of torture and abuse, which included impacts of rubber projectiles, beaters, cuts, threats, sexual abuse and poor food.
Last Friday, Venezuela Interior and Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello claimed that the 252 migrants were hit by rubber projectiles before boarding the plane back to the Caribbean country.
Maduro stated that one of those men detained in maximum security prison “lost a kidney as a result of the beating he took.”
Bukele has not yet commented on the accusations. The complaint draws attention because Venezuela is continually denounced in international organisms for torture.
In October last year, a UN mission released a report that pointed to increased July electoral fraud, with human rights violations that “include arbitrary arrests, torture, short -term forced disappearances and sexual violence, which are carried out as part of a coordinated plan to silence opponents or those considered as such”.
In addition, Maduro’s dictatorship is the subject of an investigation for crimes against humanity in the ICC.
