Latest news with #NicolasMaduro
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
A Stronger Maduro Unleashes Fear in Venezuela to Cement Power Before Local Polls
One year after he faced his biggest threat to power yet, Nicolás Maduro is about to eliminate any vestige of the opposition from Venezuela's political establishment. The president's ruling party is expected to dominate even the most local levels of government through nationwide elections for city councils and mayorships on Sunday. It already reached a supermajority in the Parliament in May, cutting back on the few seats held by other parties.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Triple murderer among 10 inmates released back to the US as part of prisoner swap with Venezuela
A triple murderer was among the 10 prisoners sent back to the US as part of a deal between the State Department and Venezuela. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 55, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Caracas last year after he killed three people in Madrid in 2016. He was one of the American citizens flown to Texas on Friday as part of a deal between the White House and the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela. The Trump administration said the Americans had been political prisoners in the country, with Secretary Marco Rubio saying: 'Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.' But the Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal warned that one of them was a murderer, not a dissident, as reported by El Pais. It is not clear if Ortiz was transferred to a prison after landing in Texas last week. Daily Mail has reached out to the State Department for comment on this story. After the prisoner swap, Venezuelan regime leader Diosdado Cabello appeared to troll the US, saying: 'We handed over some murderers for you.' Ortiz was born in Venezuela, but became a naturalized US citizen after serving in Iraq. He was arrested in Caracas in 2018 after he fled Spain following the murders. Spanish police said Ortiz meant to kill his ex-wife's new boyfriend, lawyer Víctor Joel Salas, but instead killed the wrong man and two law clerks at a law firm. Salas told Spanish media he feels betrayed after Ortiz was sent to the US. 'Both my family and I feel deceived, betrayed, and frustrated,' he said. Venezuela on Friday released 10 jailed American citizens and permanent residents in exchange for scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Aside from Ortiz, the Americans were among dozens of people, including activists, opposition members and union leaders, that Venezuela's regime took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent over the last year. 'Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked El Salvador president Nayib Bukele. Bukele said El Salvador had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. Maritza Osorio Riverón was Ortiz' third victim. Spanish police said Ortiz meant to kill his ex-wife's new boyfriend but targeted the wrong man and two assistants at a law firm Central to the deal were more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in its notorious prison. That arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove the men that his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang, teeing up a legal fight that reached the Supreme Court. The administration did not provide evidence to back up those claims. The Venezuelans had been held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which was built to hold alleged gang members in Bukele's war on the country's gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths as well as cases of torture inside its walls. Photos and videos released by El Salvador's government on Friday showed shackled Venezuelans sitting in a fleet of buses and boarding planes surrounded by officers in riot gear. One man looked up and pointed toward the sky as he climbed aboard a plane, while another made an obscene gesture toward police. One of the men is reportedly Andry Hernández Romero, a makeup artist who fled Venezuela last year and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at a border crossing in San Diego before eventually being flown to El Salvador. Maduro described Friday as 'a day of blessings and good news for Venezuela.' He called it 'the perfect day for Venezuela.' The release of the Venezuelans, meanwhile, is an invaluable win for Maduro as he presses his efforts to assert himself as president despite credible evidence that he lost reelection last year.
CTV News
a day ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Venezuela's returning migrants allege abuses in El Salvador's ‘hell' prison where U.S. sent them
Carlos Uzcategui, one of the Venezuelan migrants deported months ago to El Salvador by the United States under an immigration crackdown, is welcomed home by his wife, Gabriela Mora, in Lobatera, Venezuela, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan) LOBATERA, Venezuela — Carlos Uzcátegui tightly hugged his sobbing wife and stepdaughter on Wednesday as the morning fog in western Venezuela lifted. The family's first embrace in more than a year finally convinced him that his nightmare inside a prison in El Salvador was over. Uzcátegui was among the migrants being reunited with loved ones after four months in prison in El Salvador, where the U.S. government transferred them in one of its boldest moves to crack down on immigration. 'Every day, we asked God for the blessing of freeing us from there so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,' Uzcátegui, 33, said. 'Every day, I woke up looking at the bars, wishing I wasn't there.' 'They beat us, they kicked us. I even have quite a few bruises on my stomach,' he added before later showing a mildly bruised left abdomen. The migrants, some of whom characterized the prison as 'hell,' were freed Friday in a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Venezuelan governments, but the latter sequestered them upon arrival to their country. Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro and other officials have said many of the immigrants were physically and psychologically tortured during their detention in El Salvador, airing on state television videos of some of the men describing the alleged abuse, including rape, severe beatings and pellet-gun wounds. The narratives are reminiscent of the abuses that Maduro's government has long been accused of committing against its real or perceived, jailed opponents. As the men reached their homes, they and their relatives shared deeply emotional moments in which sad tears and happy tears rolled down their cheeks at the same time. Uzcátegui's wife, Gabriela Mora, 30, held onto their home's fence and sobbed as she saw the military vehicle carrying him approach after a 30-plus-hour bus ride to their mining community nestled in Venezuela's Andean mountains. She had set up gifts and decorations in their living room, including a star-shaped metallic blue balloon with a 'Happy Father's Day' greeting that his stepdaughter had saved since the June holiday. 'We met a lot of innocent people' The 252 men ended in El Salvador on March 16 after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to pay US$6 million to the Central American nation to house them in a mega-prison, where human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths and cases of torture. Trump accused the men of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang, which originated in Venezuela. The administration did not provide evidence to back up the accusation. However, several recently deported migrants have said U.S. authorities wrongly judged their tattoos and used them as an excuse to deport them. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello on Friday said only seven of the men had pending cases in Venezuela, adding that all the deportees would undergo medical tests and background checks before they could go home. Arturo Suárez, whose reggaeton songs surfaced on social media after he was sent to El Salvador, arrived at his family's working-class home in the capital, Caracas, on Tuesday. His sister hugged him after he exited a vehicle of Venezuela's intelligence service. 'It is hell. We met a lot of innocent people,' Suárez told reporters, referring to the prison he was held in. 'To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: Vengeance and justice is mine, and you are going to give an account to God Father.' The Associated Press could not verify the abuse allegations that Suárez and other migrants narrated in the videos aired by state media. Attorney General Tarek William Saab on Monday said he had opened an investigation against El Salvador President Nayib Bukele based on the deportees' allegations. Bukele's office did not respond to requests for comment. Appointment to seek asylum The men left El Salvador as part of a prisoner exchange with the U.S., which received 10 citizens and permanent residents whom Maduro's government had jailed over accusations of plotting to destabilize Venezuela. Mora said her husband migrated after the coal mine he had long worked at halved his pay and their street food shop went out of business in 2023. Uzcátegui left Lobatera in March 2024 with an acquaintance's promise to help him find a construction job in Orlando. On his way north, Uzcátegui crossed the punishing Darien Gap that separates Colombia and Panama, and by mid-April he had reached Mexico City. There, he worked at a public market's seafood stall until early December, when he was finally granted an appointment through a U.S. government smartphone app to seek asylum at a border crossing. But Uzcátegui never walked free in the U.S., where authorities regarded his tattoos with suspicion, said Mara. He was sent to a detention center in Texas until he and other Venezuelans were put on the airplanes that landed in El Salvador. Still, she said she does not regret supporting her husband's decision to migrate. 'It's the country's situation that forces one to make these decisions,' she said. 'If (economic) conditions here were favorable..., it wouldn't have been necessary for him to leave to be able to fix the house or to provide my daughter with a better education.' Regina Garcia Cano, The Associated Press
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Venezuela Oil Output Weathers Chevron Exit With Diluent Spree
Venezuela's oil output has been more resilient than expected since the US forced Chevron Corp. to wind down operations in the country, with a last-minute shopping spree for a key production supply helping cushion the blow. State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA has maintained average output of about 1.1 million barrels a day in June and July, according to figures seen by Bloomberg. Chevron, which pumped nearly a quarter of Venezuela's barrels, lost key licenses to operate in the country near the end of May as the Trump administration sought to pressure President Nicolas Maduro.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Venezuela's Authoritarian Government Has a New Target: Economists
Venezuela's autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, has crushed the opposition, jailed judges and politicians, and even arrested American citizens to use as leverage in international negotiations. Now, he is going after a profession that has not typically been considered risky in Venezuela: economists. Experts say the government is seeking to control the narrative around Venezuela's deepening financial crisis by targeting independent experts sharing data about the country's cratering economy. Roughly two dozen economists and others involved in publishing financial data have been detained in the past two months, according to a human rights group and the Venezuelan government. 'It's essentially a shoot-the-messenger policy,' said Phil Gunson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group who has lived in Venezuela for more than two decades. The Central Bank of Venezuela for years has not released reliable data on key indicators like inflation, leaving economists to fill the gaps with independent estimates. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
