CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said Wednesday her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under former President Nicolás Maduro's rule in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster by the United States earlier this month.
It appeared to be an understatement for the Maduro loyalist now tasked with placating an unpredictable American president who has said he will “run” Venezuela, while also consolidating power in a government that long has seethed against U.S. meddling.
Rodríguez opened her first press briefing since Maduro's capture by U.S. forces with a conciliatory tone. Addressing journalists from a red carpet at the presidential palace in the capital, Caracas, she offered assurances that the process of releasing detainees — a move reportedly made at the behest of the Trump administration — “has not yet concluded.”
The lawyer and veteran politician pitched a “Venezuela that opens itself to a new political moment, that allows for ... political and ideological diversity.”
A Venezuelan human rights organization estimates about 800 political prisoners are still being detained. That figure includes political leaders, soldiers, lawyers and members of civil society.
‘Great conversation’
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was seized and flown to the U.S. on Jan. 3 to face drug-trafficking charges.
“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump said during a bill signing in the Oval Office. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”
Unlike past speeches directed at her domestic audience that echoed Maduro’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, Rodríguez did not mention the U.S. — or the dizzying pace at which relations between both countries were evolving.
But she criticized organizations that advocate on behalf of prisoners’ rights. She pledged “strict” enforcement of the law and credited Maduro with starting the prisoner releases as a signal that her government meant no wholesale break from the past.
“Crimes related to the constitutional order are being evaluated,” she said, in apparent reference to detainees held on what human rights groups say are politically motivated charges. “Messages of hatred, intolerance, acts of violence will not be permitted.”
Flanked by her brother and National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, as well as hard-line Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, she took no questions. Cabello, she said, was coordinating the prisoner releases, which have drawn criticism for being too slow and secretive.
Walking a tightrope
Trump has enlisted Rodríguez to help secure U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, earlier this month, Trump threatened Rodríguez with a “situation probably worse than Maduro,” who is being held in a Brooklyn jail.
Maduro has pleaded not guilty to drug-related charges.
In endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition who won a Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to restore the nation’s democracy. Machado is scheduled to meet with Trump on Thursday at the White House.
After a lengthy career running Venezuela’s feared intelligence service, managing its crucial oil industry and representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage, Rodríguez now walks a tightrope, navigating pressures from both Washington and her hard-line colleagues who hold sway over the security forces.
“The regime, on one hand, wants to send a message within Venezuela that it still has complete control and the United States isn’t dominating,” said Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory in Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario. “On the other hand, internationally it's sending a message of gradual progress with the release of political prisoners. ... They’re playing a game.”
Those tensions were on display in her speech Wednesday, which focused only on the issue of prisoner releases. Venezuela’s leading prisoner rights organization, Foro Penal, has verified at least 68 prisoners freed since her interim government raised hopes for a mass release with a promise to free a “significant number” of prisoners.
Foro Penal reported the release of at least a dozen prisoners on Wednesday, including political activist Nicmer Evans. Machado campaign staffers Julio Balza and Gabriel González, whose detentions were considered to be for political reasons, were also freed on Wednesday, the opposition leader’s party announced.
Differing tallies
Earlier this week, Rodríguez's government released several U.S. citizens, as well as Italian and Spanish nationals and opposition figures.
But it was Maduro who first started the process of releasing prisoners, Rodríguez insisted, apparently pushing back on White House claims that the prisoners were being freed due to U.S. pressure. She said Maduro oversaw the release of 194 prisoners in December because he “was thinking precisely about opening spaces for understanding, for coexistence, for tolerance.”
She claimed her own caretaker government had released 212 detainees, without offering any evidence. Foro Penal estimates that over 800 prisoners were still held in Venezuela’s prison system on political grounds, and has criticized the government's lack of transparency.
Rodríguez did not address those complaints. Instead, she slammed “self-proclaimed nongovernmental organizations” as having “tried to sell falsehoods about Venezuela.”
“There will always be those who want to fish in troubled waters,” she said, trying to present her first press briefing as an effort to counter false narratives and “let the truth be reported.”
___ Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Megan Janetsky in Mexico City and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.
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