Venezuela Leaders Free Political Prisoners in a Sign of Possible Change

The interim government released some prisoners under pressure from the Trump administration, even as it continued arrests and crackdowns elsewhere.

Venezuela’s government began to release political prisoners from two notorious prisons on Thursday in the first ostensible gesture of change by the new administration since the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro and said it would control the country.

Jorge Rodríguez — the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly and brother of the nation’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez — did not specify how many people would be freed but said it would be “an important number” and that they would be both Venezuelans and foreign nationals.

“Consider this gesture from the Bolivarian government — made with sincere intentions toward peace — as the contribution we all must make so that our republic can continue living peacefully and striving for prosperity,” said Mr. Rodríguez, using a term for the government to honor Simón Bolívar, Venezuela’s independence leader.

As of Thursday evening, seven prisoners had been confirmed released.

Among those first prisoners was Rocío San Miguel, one of Venezuela’s most prominent security experts, who had investigated her country’s authoritarian government until she was detained in February 2024.

Ms. San Miguel, who is a dual Venezuelan-Spanish citizen, was one of five Spanish citizens released on Thursday, according to the Spanish government. The others included two men accused of being members of Spain’s intelligence agency in 2024, though their families said they were tourists, and a journalist who was aboard a research vessel intercepted by the Venezuelan Navy last year, according to Spanish media reports.

The other two released were Enrique Márquez, a former presidential candidate detained after demanding voting records from the disputed 2024 election, and Biagio Pilieri, an opposition leader arrested during protests after that same vote.

Prisoners’ rights groups estimate that between 800 and 900 political prisoners are incarcerated in Venezuela, many under harsh conditions. Most are charged with crimes such as incitement of hate, conspiring to overthrow the government, or terrorism for simply exercising basic political rights, according to the rights groups. More than 100 opposition party members and more than 20 journalists remain imprisoned, according to party officials and the national media union.

The promise to release some of those prisoners offered a flicker of hope for a more open, democratic future for Venezuela, even as its government intensified a crackdown on citizens elsewhere, interrogating people and searching their phones for signs of support for Mr. Maduro’s capture.

“Let us hope that this is indeed the beginning of the dismantling of a repressive system in Venezuela,” said Alfredo Romero, director of Foro Penal, Venezuela’s leading human rights organization. “May the justice system work to protect citizens, and not as a weapon of political persecution against dissidents.”

A White House spokeswoman said in a statement, “This is one example of how the president is using maximum leverage to do right by the American and Venezuelan people.”

It remains unclear whether Thursday’s announcement signals any real shift toward political opening in the country.

For years, Venezuela’s crackdowns have been followed by limited reprieves, which have included prisoner releases — a cycle that has exhausted Venezuelans. That includes the release of nearly 200 prisoners in the weeks before Mr. Maduro’s capture, according to rights groups, as is quite regular around the holidays.

After Mr. Maduro’s disputed claims that he won the 2024 election, Venezuelan authorities arrested about 2,000 people who had protested, in an offensive known as “Operation Knock Knock,” though not all of them were still detained. In recent months, the Maduro government had stepped up the arbitrary detentions amid escalating tensions with the United States.

After the U.S. attack on Venezuela on Saturday, many Venezuelans rejoiced at the prospect of real change in the country, and members of the political opposition said their most urgent priority was the release of jailed dissidents. Yet in the days following, President Trump’s public comments focused on Venezuela’s oil.

“We haven’t gotten to that yet,” Mr. Trump said Sunday when asked if he would push for the release of prisoners. “What we want to do now is fix up the oil.”

On Tuesday, he said that “they have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they’re closing up.”

Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to El Helicoide, a hulking concrete pyramid in central Caracas initially built to be a shopping mall but instead became an infamous prison, headquarters of the secret police and a constant, visible reminder of state violence.

On Thursday, Atali Cabrejo said she immediately ran to El Helicoide when she heard the government was releasing prisoners, hoping to embrace her son, Juan Jose Freites, who has been imprisoned for two years. Mr. Freites, 35, was a coordinator for the country’s main opposition party, Vente Venezuela, and was taken in January 2024 from the front steps of their home, she said.

“It’s time for them all to be released — all of them,” she added. “And time for the country to unite.”

Gabriela Álvarez was waiting outside El Helicoide for the release of Jesús Armas, a political activist who had supported the opposition in the 2024 vote and has been in prison since December of that year. “His mother is home waiting for the phone call,” Ms. Álvarez said. “Nobody should be behind bars for thinking differently.”

As the day wore on, frustration mounted among the waiting families. Outside the Rodeo prison on the outskirts of Caracas, the jailed dissidents’ relatives lingered — some on plastic chairs on the sidewalk, others in their cars — watching the hours pass with no word.

Gonzalo Himiob, a Venezuelan lawyer and another leader of Foro Penal, said the decision to release prisoners this week was a sign that the interim government was seeking to forge a path ahead amid intense pressure from the United States. “A certain faction within the government intends to send a positive message not only to the Venezuelan people, but also to the international community,” he said.

After meeting with members of Congress on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said U.S. officials’ plan for Venezuela involved three phases: stabilization, reconciliation and transition. That second phase, reconciliation, would include the release of political prisoners and the return of the political opposition to Venezuela.

Democratic lawmakers criticized the strategy. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, called it an “insane plan” that involved “stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of time undefined as leverage to micromanage the country.”

Omar González Moreno, a former Venezuelan congressman and key ally of the opposition leader María Corina Machado, said that the week had been a “carousel of intense emotions.”

First, he and other opponents of the government celebrated Mr. Maduro’s seizure. Next they were shocked the White House had backed Mr. Maduro’s vice president, Ms. Rodríguez, as the interim leader. Then they worried that the democratization they had hoped for may not materialize.

But, on Thursday, the release of prisoners provided new hope, he said. “Little by little the outlook has been clearing up,” he said.

He said that Ms. Machado had not spoken with Mr. Trump since Mr. Maduro’s capture, but that her coalition was encouraged by Mr. Rubio’s comments about a democratic transition. He said members of the opposition were eager to return to Venezuela and compete in open elections.

On Fox News on Thursday night, Mr. Trump said it would be “a while before they can have elections,” adding “but ultimately they’ll have elections.” He said that he planned to meet with Ms. Machado next week.

It remained unclear how many prisoners would be freed. But the release of Ms. San Miguel was significant because she was perhaps the nation’s most prominent political prisoner.

The head of a modest but influential nonprofit organization that monitors the armed forces, her arrest at the Venezuelan airport in 2024 sent shock waves through the country’s human rights circles and signaled that, ahead of that year’s election, Mr. Maduro was intensifying his years of systematic repression.

After her arrest, her daughter, two brothers and two former romantic partners were also detained. One of her former partners remained imprisoned, but the rest were released in 2024. Her daughter was with her at the Spanish Embassy on Thursday, a relative said.

The Spanish government said that aside from Ms. San Miguel, the other prisoners released so far were Andrés Martínez, José María Basoa, Miguel Moreno and Ernesto Gorbe.

President Pedro Sánchez of Spain celebrated their release. “It is an act of justice,” he wrote on social media, “and a necessary step to promote dialogue and reconciliation among Venezuelans.”

Frances Robles and Lucía Cholakian Herrera contributed reporting.

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