“Maduro’s regime was satisfied with the exchange agreement; that’s why they accepted it,” Bukele said in a social media post. “Now they are shouting and expressing outrage, but not because they disagree with the deal, but because they have just realized that they are left without hostages from the most powerful country in the world.”
On Friday, the administration of President Donald Trump successfully negotiated the release of the last ten remaining Americans unjustly detained by the Maduro regime. The negotiations also reportedly led to the release of a group of 80 Venezuelan political prisoners. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce confirmed on Tuesday that there are no unjustly detained Americans left in Venezuela. She urged Americans to abstain from travelling to the South American country or its borders due to the risk of being wrongfully detained by the Maduro regime “for months or even years” with no guarantee for release.
In exchange, the government of El Salvador released the group of 252 Venezuelan illegal migrants suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization deported to El Salvador this year after President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. The 252 suspected Tren de Aragua members were detained at El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison as per the terms of an agreement between Presidents Trump and Bukele.
The Maduro regime and its propaganda apparatus have falsely claimed the exchange as a “victory” for the rogue socialists, asserting that the regime achieved the “liberation” of the group of 252 deportees from their “kidnapping” at a “concentration camp” in El Salvador.
Through an official Foreign Ministry statement published on Friday, the Venezuelan socialist regime said that Venezuela “paid a high price” for the liberty of the deportees through the prisoner exchange deal with the United States, claiming that the now-released Americans “were wanted by the courts for their proven involvement in serious crimes against the peace, independence, and security of the nation.” The Maduro regime thanked former Spanish President José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero “for his courageous efforts in promoting political dialogue, peace, and reconciliation in Venezuela.”
The statement read in part:
The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros, always willing to protect the lives and integrity of these Venezuelans subjected to serious human rights violations, had no hesitation in carrying out this exchange and thus rescuing these Venezuelan migrants kidnapped in El Salvador by the most extremist sectors of the Venezuelan right wing.
Nicolás Maduro and members of his regime repeatedly claimed that the deportation of the 252 Venezuelan illegal migrants under the Alien Enemies Act was comparable to the persecution of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and their imprisonment in concentration camps, accusing Bukele of “kidnapping” the Venezuelan deportees.
On Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced that his office will open a “probe” against President Bukele, accusing his government of “systematically” committing human right abuses against the Venezuelan deportees such as “daily torture, prolonged isolation without sunlight or ventilation, being shot with pellets, receiving rotten food and undrinkable water, being denied medical care, and numerous violations of due process.”
Saab, who did not present any evidence to substantiate his accusations, claimed that the deportees were “brutally tortured at all hours and were victims of sexual abuse” by Salvadoran prison guards who, according to claims made by some of the deportees, “consumed drugs” during their watch.
After footage published by Venezuelan propaganda outlets showed some of the deportees “requiring” medical attention upon their arrival in Caracas, Bukele published a video of the same deportees in healthy conditions at the time they left El Salvador.
“Funny how the perfectly healthy Tren de Aragua detainees suddenly fall ill the moment they set foot in Venezuela,” Bukele wrote. “Same script, every time.”
Other footage either directly published by Bukele or reposted by the Salvadoran president on his official Twitter account shows some of the deportees cursing at Salvadoran law enforcement officials and doing gang signs before boarding the plane back to Venezuela.
In April, after Maduro publicly claimed that he would do “everything possible” to “rescue” the Venezuelans “kidnapped” and placed in Salvadoran “concentration camps,” President Bukele presented a “humanitarian agreement” proposal to Maduro, which involved releasing the 252 Venezuelan deportees in exchange for an equal number of political prisoners of the socialist regime. This would have included foreigners from roughly a dozen countries unjustly detained in Venezuelan detention centers. The Maduro regime rejected the proposal as a “legal aberration.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Breitbart News
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