Venezuela’s interim regime released Rafael Tudares Bracho, son-in-law of opposition leader Edmundo González, as Tudares’s own wife reported this Thursday (22) on her profile on the social network X.
“I fulfill my duty to inform you that, after 380 days of unjust arbitrary detention and having suffered, for more than a year, an inhumane situation of forced disappearance, my husband Rafael Tudares Bracho returned home this morning”, explained Mariana González de Tudares.
Tudores was arrested on January 7, 2025 – three days before Nicolás Maduro took office for a third consecutive six-year term –, when human rights defender Carlos Correa and former opposition presidential candidate Enrique Márquez were also arrested, the latter two having already been released.
Since the US captured the dictator of Venezuela to try him for crimes related to narco-terrorism and the country’s leadership was transferred to the dictatorship’s number two, Delcy Rodríguez, the Venezuelan regime has been gradually releasing part of the hundreds of political prisoners it keeps in the country’s prisons.
“It was an arduous and very hard fight for more than a year, in which we finally achieved Rafael’s release, and we aspire, sooner or later, to his full freedom, to which he is entitled,” added his wife.
She also thanked “very especially to each and every one of the people who supported me humanly in the fight for her freedom” and to “the team from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Panama, who followed up the case, within the context of their humanitarian competencies.”
He also remembered “all the families of the victims of forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and unjust prisoners, who are still waiting for the freedom of their loved ones. All my solidarity and support.”
Tudares is the son-in-law of Edmundo González, currently exiled in Spain and who in 2024 was chosen as the unitary candidate of the opposition (Democratic Unitary Platform) for the presidency of Venezuela.
González was recognized by a large part of the international community as the winner of the July 2024 presidential elections, something that was rejected by Maduro, who proclaimed himself the winner of that election.
