SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed finishing up a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would alternate Venezuelan deportees from america his authorities has saved imprisoned for what he referred to as “political prisoners” in Venezuela.
In a publish on the social media platform X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Bukele listed off quite a few relations of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained throughout the South American authorities’s electoral crackdown final yr.
“The one motive they’re imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “Nevertheless, I wish to suggest a humanitarian settlement that features the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who had been deported, in alternate for the discharge and give up of an equivalent quantity (252) of the 1000’s of political prisoners you maintain.”
Amongst these he listed had been the son-in-law of former presidential candidate Edmundo González, quite a few political leaders searching for asylum within the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he stated had been 50 detained residents from quite a few totally different international locations internationally.
Bukele additionally listed the mom of opposition chief MarÃa Corina Machado, whose home the political chief has stated was surrounded by Venezuelan police in January.
Bukele stated he would ask El Salvador’s overseas ministry to keep in touch with the Maduro authorities, which didn’t instantly reply to the publish.
The proposal comes as El Salvador has come underneath sharp worldwide scrutiny for accepting Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported by the Trump administration, which accused them of being alleged gang members with little proof. Deportees are locked up in a “mega-prison” know because the Terrorism Confinement Middle (CECOT), constructed by the Bukele authorities throughout his crackdown on the nation’s gangs.
Controversy has solely continued after it was revealed {that a} Maryland father married to a U.S. citizen, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was amongst these deported, and courtroom battles have damaged out preventing over his return.
El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas on Sunday referred to as on Bukele not “to permit our nation to change into an enormous worldwide jail.”
Regardless of the controversy, Bukele on Sunday maintained that the entire folks he has saved within the jail had been “a part of a part of an operation in opposition to gangs just like the Tren de Aragua in america.”
