El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele waves as he departs following a gathering on the White Home with President Donald Trump, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed finishing up a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would alternate Venezuelan deportees from the USA his authorities has stored 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 few members of the family of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained through the South American authorities’s electoral crackdown final 12 months.
“The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “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.”
Amongst these he listed had been the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, quite a few political leaders searching for asylum within the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he mentioned had been 50 detained residents from quite a few totally different international locations the world over. 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.
Venezuela’s prosecutor’s workplace responded Sunday night time, calling Bukele’s statements “cynical” and referred to the Salvadoran chief as a “neofascist.”
It demanded Bukele’s authorities present the Venezuelan authorities with an inventory 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.
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 Heart (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 isn’t any 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 the entire folks he has stored within the jail had been “part of part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”
