SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed finishing up a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would trade Venezuelan deportees from america his authorities has saved imprisoned for what he referred to as “political prisoners” in Venezuela.
In a put up on the social media platform X, directed at President Nicolás Maduro, Bukele listed off quite a lot of members of the family of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained in the course of the South American authorities’s electoral crackdown final yr.
“The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” wrote the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator,” a person who himself has been accused of locking up political opponents.
“However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold.”
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI through Getty Pictures
Amongst these he listed had been the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, quite a lot of political leaders in search of asylum within the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he mentioned had 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 up a correspondence with the Maduro authorities.
Venezuela’s prosecutor’s workplace responded Sunday evening, calling Bukele’s statements “cynical” and referred to the Salvadoran chief as a “neofascist.”
It demanded Bukele’s authorities present the Venezuelan authorities with a listing of the folks detained in addition to their authorized standing and medical stories.
“The treatment received by Venezuelans in the United States and El Salvador, constitutes a serious violation of international human rights law and constitutes a crime against humanity,” it mentioned within the assertion.
PEDRO MATTEY through Getty Pictures
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 deported by mistake. The U.S. Supreme Court docket ordered the U.S. authorities to facilitate his return, however there’s no signal of that occuring.
El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas on Sunday referred to as on Bukele not “to allow our country to become a big international prison.”
Regardless of the controversy, Bukele maintained that all the folks he has saved within the jail had been “part of part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”
Janetsky reported from Mexico Metropolis.
This model has corrected Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s citizenship standing.
