Several human rights NGOs today announced the release of between 20 and 30 people at dawn, as it appears shortly after the closing of the second round of dialogue between ‘chavism’ and opposition.
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26/09/2026
by
Lusa
ANDamong those released, according to the organization Foro Penal, on social network X, are former colonel Miguel Castillo Cedeño, arrested in 2019, and Frank Cabañas, arrested in 2017, both accused of alleged destabilization plans against the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Criminal Court, a leading organization in the legal defense of political prisoners, informed the EFE news agency that it was checking the total number of detainees released.
“ We have information about just over 20, but we are checking each case directly,” the director-vice-president of the organization Gonzalo Himiob told EFE.
In turn, NGO Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón (JEP) reported on social network X that it was able to verify 29 releases from various detention centres.
“ We want to clarify that a group of 17 people among the freed were not included in our register of political prisoners. We clarify that this is strictly due to the technical and institutional criteria that we apply to the methodological classification of cases — based on criminal types or imputed charges —, which does not diminish the relevance of their situation or the attention we devote to their processes,” JEP said.
Meanwhile, the NGO Surgentes announced the release of eight women, including one teenage girl, accused of integrating the so-called “tancol” — an acronym created by local authorities to refer to the “armed Colombian drug traffickers”.
After the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States in January, the Government of the now interim President, Delcy Rodríguez, announced a process of liberations that extended throughout the year and promoted an amnesty law that benefited more than 8,000 people, although most of them were already under restricted freedom.
These new releases occur after the end of the second cycle of political dialogue, although ‘chavism’ has indicated that this is not a topic discussed at the negotiating table.
According to the Forum, before these releases, there were 344 political prisoners in Venezuela.