Photo: YURI CORTEZ / AFP / Getty Images
By: Real America News Updated 01 Oct 2022, 18: 34 pm EDT
The President Joe Biden announced Saturday that Venezuela1242808610 released seven Americans jailed in the South American country and US officials confirmed that two nephews of President Nicolás Maduro’s wife were released who had been imprisoned for years for drug trafficking convictions, in a rare softening of relations between the two countries.
The exchange of Americans, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, is the largest exchange of detained citizens conducted by the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden has pardoned the sentence and allowed the release of Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, relatives of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in exchange for seven Americans jailed in Venezuela.
The two Venezuelans, nephews of the Venezuelan first lady, Cilia Flores, were sentenced in December 2015 in a New York court to comply 18 Years in prison for drug trafficking.
Biden signed the order to pardon Campo Flores y Flores “weeks ago” of Freitas; but the exchange did not happen until now because the two parties had to finish the negotiations and resolve some logistical issues, the aforementioned officials detailed.
Those sources did not detail where the exchange took place and only said that it took place in a “country between Venezuela and the United States.”
Two planes landed there, one from Venezuela and the other from the United States, the negotiators verified the identity of the subjects and the exchange took place, so that at this moment the seven Americans are back home, officials detailed.
Maduro’s relatives, arrested in Haiti on 04 November 2015 by agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and immediately extradited to the United States, they were serving their sentence in a Florida prison.