Venezuelan Families Spend the Night Outside a Prison Awaiting Releases
Relatives of political prisoners spent Thursday night and early Friday morning outside a Venezuelan prison, awaiting the announced release of “a significant number of people,” one of the first actions of the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States. Outside Rodeo I prison, located in the Zamora municipality of Miranda state (north, near Caracas), around 50 people spent the night waiting for news of their relatives. News media confirmed that some slept on the ground or in cars, while others remained awake.
Some of them said they arrived on Thursday at noon, when Jorge Rodríguez, head of Parliament and brother of Venezuela’s interim president, announced the release of detainees, although he did not specify the number or the conditions, but did say that they were already taking place. “We spent the whole night waiting,” Miliany Castillo, sister of Oswaldo Castillo, told reporters. She said he has been “unjustly detained” for more than 7 years. Relatives of political prisoners spent Thursday night and early Friday morning outside a Venezuelan prison, awaiting the announced release of “a significant number of people,” one of the first actions of the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States.
Outside Rodeo I prison, located in the Zamora municipality of Miranda state (north, near Caracas), around 50 people spent the night waiting for news of their relatives. News media confirmed that some slept on the ground or in cars, while others remained awake. Some of them said they arrived on Thursday at noon, when Jorge Rodríguez, head of Parliament and brother of Venezuela’s interim president, announced the release of detainees, although he did not specify the number or the conditions, but did say that they were already taking place. “We spent the whole night waiting,” Miliany Castillo, sister of Oswaldo Castillo, told reporters.
She said he has been “unjustly detained” for more than 7 years. Castillo claimed that “so far” there has been “no release” at Rodeo I and asserted that the authorities deny having any information about it. In fact, he indicated that family members are signing up to visit their detained relatives and deliver medicines, food, or other supplies, as they usually do. “We had a pretty rough night here. We held on to our faith and hope of being able to hug our families again,” he said. Mariana González, the daughter of opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, went to Rodeo I to find out about her husband, Rafael Tudares, who is presumed to be imprisoned there after his arrest in January 2025. Mariana González, who left the prison around midnight, indicated this Friday that she still “has no concrete information” about her husband, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison last December.
“The authorities have not officially informed us of anything so far,” González Urrutia’s daughter stated on her X account. As of 8:00 a.m. local time this Friday, the NGO Foro Penal reported that it has only confirmed the release of eight people, including former presidential candidate Enrique Márquez, politician Biagio Pilieri and five Spanish citizens. “There have been a few other releases, but not of people classified as such (political prisoners),” said the vice-director of Foro Penal, Gonzalo Himiob, on X. For its part, the NGO Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners demanded “immediate and verifiable information, respect for families and an end to the use of silence as a mechanism of psychological torture.”
