The Venezuelan government released six detained Americans after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met an adviser for US President Donald Trump in Caracas on Friday.
“We are wheels up and headed home with these 6 American citizens,” Richard Grenell posted on X after he left with the US citizens. “They just spoke to @reaDonaldTrump and they couldn’t stop thanking him.”
Grenell was sent to Caracas in a bid to get Venezuela to accept deportation flights from the US that carried gang members and to secure the release of the prisoners from the US.
The meeting was the most significant encounter between the two hostile governments in years. Venezuela said the two sides talked about the imprisoned US citizens, sanctions and migration.
The trip set up a potential clash with Maduro, whose government has refused to accept deportation flights from the US for about a year.
However, he might also use the visit as an opportunity to push for easing US sanctions that have crippled his economy, including the oil sector.
The last US delegation to visit Caracas was in 2023, led by then-US president Joe Biden’s special envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens. He secured a prisoner swap in which Venezuela freed 10 Americans and handed over a defense contractor. The US released a Maduro ally from a US prison.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Information did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Friday’s release.
The majority of the Americans released on Friday had been arrested after last year’s controversial presidential election and were accused by authorities of taking part in an anti-government conspiracy plot and an attempt to kill Maduro and other officials.
Last month, Caracas-based human rights group Foro Penal counted 1,408 political prisoners in the country. Prominent politicians such as Freddy Superlano and Biagio Pilieri, as well as human rights activists Rocio San Miguel and Javier Tarazona, remain in prison.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS