Son-in-law of Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González released from prison

Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González, was released from prison early Thursday after a year behind bars, Tudares’ wife said on X, the latest such release since the US capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Tudores, a 46-year-old lawyer, was arrested in January 2025 while taking his young children to school in Caracas and accused, like other political prisoners, of terrorism, charges that his relatives say are unfounded. “After 380 days of unjust arbitrary detention and having endured, for more than a year, an inhumane situation of forced disappearance, my husband Rafael Tudares Bracho returned home,” said Mariana González de Tudares in X. Prisoner releases, announced this month by the Venezuelan authorities, have been slow. To date, rights group Foro Penal said 151 political prisoners have been released, while families continue to wait anxiously. Many relatives of detainees — both well-known and lesser-known — have gathered and held vigils outside prisons or visited various detention centers in an effort to find out where their loved ones are being held. The releases follow Maduro’s Jan. 3 capture in Caracas, his indictment in a New York court for narcoterrorism, the interim swearing in of his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and the announcement that the U.S. would refine and sell up to 50 million barrels of oil held in Venezuela under U.S. sanctions. Among the prominent figures who remain imprisoned are opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa and lawyer Perkins Rocha, both close allies of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado; Freddy Superlano, leader of the opposition party Voluntad Popular; and Javier Tarazona, director of an NGO. (Reporting by Reuters)

Source link