Venezuela releases two American prisoners after meeting with US delegation

Venezuela on Tuesday released at least two US citizens who were being held in the country, according to the Reuters news agency.

According to what three officials with knowledge of the matter told the agency, one of the people released was Gustavo Cardenas, one of six executives at the Citgo refinery, a subsidiary of Venezuelan oil company PDVSA in the US, who had been arrested by the Caracas dictatorship in 2017 on charges of financial crimes.

The second, according to The New York Times, is Cuban-American Jorge Alberto Fernández, a tourist accused of terrorism in 2021 and unrelated to the first case. There is no information on the whereabouts of the released prisoners.

The gesture comes days after a US delegation paid a visit to Venezuela. The trip by Joe Biden’s envoys was mainly about the possibility of loosening the current sanctions that the Americans impose on the country’s oil.

Since the administration of Donald Trump, Venezuela has been banned from selling the product to the US country. However, current administration officials say the release of the detainees would not be part of an agreement to restart trade between the countries — there are at least eight more U.S. citizens detained in the country on terrorism-related charges, according to the New York Times.

On Tuesday, the US decided to ban the import of gas, coal and oil from Russia, in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.

The war in Eastern Europe and the many trade sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow are triggering a crisis that is already being felt at American gas stations – record gas prices have been recorded in states such as California.

Thus, the trip was also intended to bring the Biden administration closer to Venezuela, a country that, in addition to not having diplomatic ties with the US and being a strong ally of Russia, has the largest oil reserves in the world.

Bilateral relations between Washington and Caracas have been strained since the rise of Hugo Chávez to power in 1999. Tension reached its highest level under the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021), which tried to overthrow the Chavista dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro by recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president.

On the other hand, Venezuela and Russia have maintained close relations for decades. In the military area, for example, Moscow sold Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and sent a navy fleet to carry out military exercises in the Caribbean. At the UN, the Maduro government did not vote in the session that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because it was in debt with the organization.

Last week, the White House renewed for one year a “national emergency” Executive Order regarding Venezuela, on the grounds that political persecution, press freedom and the deterioration of human rights continue at critical levels, representing a “unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security and foreign policy”.

In response to Biden’s gesture and the delegation’s visit, which marked the resumption of high-level talks between the two countries, Maduro said last Monday (7th), in a speech on TV, that he is interested in getting closer to the US. .

“We had a meeting, I can call it respectful, cordial, very diplomatic,” he said at a cabinet meeting. “There were the flags of the USA and Venezuela and they looked very beautiful. The two flags, united, as they should be.”

The dictator also announced the resumption of negotiations with the opposition, in Mexico, with the mediation of Norway. The dialogue had been suspended since the capture in Cape Verde and extradition to the US of businessman Alex Saab, operator of the regime, in November. In the second, the dictator called the process a “hard blow”.

The six Citgo executives imprisoned in Venezuela have been receiving different forms of treatment, which vary according to the climate of the relationship between the two countries. They have been in detention centers or under house arrest.

Since the last year, the six would be in a single cell, in an underground prison of the Venezuelan secret police.