SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed finishing up a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would change Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government has saved imprisoned for what he known as “political prisoners” in Venezuela.
In a put up on the social media platform X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Bukele listed off quite a lot of relations of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained throughout the South American authorities’s electoral crackdown final 12 months.
“The one motive they’re imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “Nonetheless, I wish to suggest a humanitarian settlement that features the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who have been deported, in change for the discharge and give up of an equivalent quantity (252) of the 1000’s of political prisoners you maintain.”
Amongst these he listed have been the son-in-law of former presidential candidate Edmundo González, quite a lot of political leaders in search of asylum within the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he mentioned have been 50 detained residents from quite a lot of completely different nations internationally.
Bukele additionally listed the mom of opposition chief María Corina Machado, whose home the political chief has mentioned was surrounded by Venezuelan police in January.
Bukele mentioned he would ask El Salvador’s overseas ministry to keep in touch with the Maduro authorities, which didn’t instantly reply to the put up.
The proposal comes as El Salvador has come beneath 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 court docket battles have damaged out combating over his return.
El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas on Sunday known as on Bukele not “to permit our nation to turn out to be an enormous worldwide jail.”
Regardless of the controversy, Bukele on Sunday maintained that the entire folks he has saved within the jail have been “a part of a part of an operation towards gangs just like the Tren de Aragua in the US.”
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