Venezuelan authorities released dozens of detainees on Saturday as part of the protests following the July presidential elections, according to the Non-Governmental Organization Foro Penal.
According to data from the local human rights group, at least 107 people were released from prison, a fact that has not been confirmed by the authorities.
The lack of official information prevents us from knowing the exact number, the identity of those affected and whether judicial measures are still pending against them.
According to Foro Penal figures, at least 1,800 people were detained in the days following the elections, in which the National Electoral Council declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner without publishing detailed data on the elections and amid complaints. of opposition fraud and requests for information from several countries that were never answered.
At least 69 of those detained are minors, according to the NGO, which has been reporting on the releases on social networks since early Saturday morning.
“From early hours There are some releases of political prisoners due to the post-electoral situation“, said the director of Foro Penal, Alfredo Romero, on the X network.
“So far they have only released 10 from Yare III,” he added. The Yare III prison is in the state of Miranda, in the center of the country.
Romero later added that some women detained in the La Crisálida prison, in the same region, had also been released, although he did not detail how many.
Hours later, the director of Foro Penal reported on his Instagram profile that 50 more detainees were released from the Tocorón prison, in the state of Aragua.
The publication was accompanied by a video that showed some young people walking along a road next to a prison wall, while some women appear to celebrate their release from prison.
Already late in the afternoon, Romero reported that those released were 107 in total.
In addition to Yare III, La Crisálida and Tocorón, the other prison from which some detainees were released is Tocuyito, in the state of Carabobo.
President Maduro had opened the door to releases this week in a television appearance.
“I call on Dr. Tarek William Saab, attorney general, to the judges of the country, as head of state, if there is any case to rectify and also review that there is justice,” said Maduro, who spoke of possible “procedural errors” which he justified by saying that they occurred at “a moment of a crazy riot.”
On Friday, following Maduro’s words, Attorney General Tarek Saab said in a statement that he had asked to review at least 225 cases of detentions, without giving more details.
The prosecutor explained that the protests after Maduro’s controversial victory left 28 dead and almost 200 injured, but activists and relatives of detainees have denounced arbitrary arrests and torture in prison.
The Venezuelan opposition assures that its only objective was to intimidate the population to keep Maduro in power and silence the demand for the publication of the detailed results of the elections.
Since then, Maduro’s rival at the polls, Edmundo González Urrutia, left for asylum in Spain and the leader of the opposition coalition, María Corina Machado, remains in hiding.
Maduro accuses them both of orchestrating protests aimed at sowing chaos in the country.
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