President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele repeated his offer to Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday to send 252 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. back to Venezuela in exchange for Maduro releasing 252 of his political prisoners.
Bukele first issued the “humanitarian agreement” proposal to Maduro on Sunday for the liberation of 252 of Maduro’s political prisoners in exchange for 252 deportees suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization. In addition to Venezuelan political prisoners, Bukele proposed releasing the Americans, Italian, Israeli, and other foreigners representing roughly 20 other nationalities whom the Maduro regime has unjustly detained.
Maduro, who has repeatedly claimed that Bukele “kidnapped” the deportees, rejected the proposal and accused Bukele of engaging in “Nazism,” hoping that “Bukele will one day be tried and face justice.”
The Salvadoran president responded to Maduro on Tuesday on his Twitter account. Bukele accompanied his response with a copy of the formal proposal issued by the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry to its Venezuelan counterpart in Caracas.
In the letter, the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry informed Venezuela that the 252 Venezuelan deportees are detained at the CECOT Terrorism Confinement Center, adding that the deportees have been identified for their links with the Tren de Aragua terrorist organizations and that, as a result, they are being prosecuted for the commission of various crimes.
“Mr. Nicolás Maduro, you stated yesterday that you will not accept our proposal for a prisoner exchange. However, your refusal lacks coherence,” Bukele’s message read.
“You yourself have made such exchanges in the past. You even released 30 political prisoners in exchange for only one: Alex Saab, one of your closest collaborators, accused of participating in serious crimes and crimes against the Venezuelan people,” he added.
Bukele then asked, “You thought a 30 for 1 exchange was fair, but now you reject a fair proposal of 1 for 1? Was it not you who stated that you would do ‘everything necessary’ to achieve the release of the Venezuelans detained in El Salvador?”
In December 2023, during the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, Maduro released a group of political prisoners, including roughly ten unjustly detained Americans, in exchange for the release of Alex Saab, Maduro’s suspected top money launderer and “financial brain.”
At the time of his release, Saab, a Colombian national with an extensive list of international corruption accusations, was undergoing trial proceedings in a U.S. court on charges of using the American financial system to launder $350 million from Venezuela’s state coffers. Saab was given a “hero’s welcome” in Caracas after the Biden administration released him. He now serves as Maduro’s Industries Minister.
Since March, the Maduro regime has repeatedly claimed that the deportation of Venezuelan illegal migrants to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked by President Donald Trump is comparable to Nazi Germany’s concentration camps and its persecution of the Jewish people.
Maduro has also claimed that he will do “everything possible” to “rescue” the Venezuelans who Bukele has allegedly “kidnapped” and placed in Salvadoran “concentration camps.”
“Do you mean then that you were lying? Was the reception in Miraflores for the relatives of the detainees a mere media spectacle?” Bukele asked Maduro. “I reiterate our proposal, this time attaching the formal documentation sent to your Foreign Ministry.”
“I await your response. And I hope that the Venezuelan people, and the whole world, will be able to see clearly, if they still had any doubts, who you really are,” he concluded.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil rejected the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry’s request hours later in a letter sent to the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry and demanded the “immediate and unconditional” release of the 252 deportees.
Gil deemed the proposal “illegal and morally inadmissible” and a “confession” of alleged human right violations. Gil, who accused El Salvador of denying the deportees the right to “defense, due process, and access to justice,” claimed that the political prisoners held by Venezuela are detained for the “commission of terrible punishable acts.”
“By trying to condition the release of innocent people to an exchange for citizens deprived of liberty in Venezuela for completely unrelated causes (commission of terrible punishable acts), with no legal or ethical basis. Taking into account additionally, that none of the detainees he mentions have Salvadoran citizenship, most of them being Venezuelan citizens,” the letter read.
“This approach constitutes a legal aberration, without precedent in the framework of bilateral or multilateral relations, which violates elementary principles of justice, proportionality, and human dignity,” the letter continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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