Venezuela’s worldwide prisoners getting used as hostages : NPR

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Manuel Alejandro Tique used to dwell in a peaceable rental on the outskirts of Bogotá, from the place he would bike to his workplace within the heart of town a number of occasions every week. Now, he is in a most safety jail in Venezuela, the place inmates are hardly ever allowed to speak with the surface world.

“We’re continuously anxious about how he is doing,” says his sister Diana Tique, who lives within the three-bedroom condo that has been the household’s dwelling for years.

She says that through the first months of her brother’s detention, she had hassle sleeping, including that the “emotional toll” of getting him detained with out trial in a overseas jail has been immense.

Manuel Tique, a 32-year-old humanitarian employee, is amongst a rising variety of overseas nationals detained by Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian authorities as Venezuela faces financial sanctions and political isolation from the USA and Europe.

With the U.S. now amassing naval forces and even blowing up a number of boats within the southern Caribbean in an anti-narcotics mission that Maduro has described as the beginning of a possible assault on his authorities, kinfolk of the prisoners say they face a brand new degree of uncertainty.

“I am scared concerning the navy stress,” says Manuel Tique’s father, Víctor Manuel. “It’d result in freedom, but it surely may additionally imply Maduro holds these prisoners for longer.”

Venezuela’s authorities has accused lots of the foreigners in its prisons of plotting to overthrow President Maduro.

However human rights teams say these prisoners are largely vacationers, enterprise folks and humanitarian employees who had nothing to do with Venezuelan politics.

Juan Pappier, the deputy Americas director at Human Rights Watch, says that presently there are 89 overseas nationals imprisoned in Venezuelan jails, from international locations that embrace Colombia, Spain, Argentina, France and the Czech Republic.

Earlier this yr, Venezuela launched 10 Individuals held in its jails in trade for greater than 200 Venezuelan migrants whom the U.S. had deported to a infamous jail in El Salvador.

Pappier says that Venezuela intensified detentions of foreigners after its presidential election in 2024 — a vote that Maduro has been extensively accused of stealing.

Dozens of nations didn’t acknowledge Maduro’s reelection final yr, with present White Home officers describing the Venezuelan president as an “illegitimate” chief who heads a “narco-terror cartel.”

“It seems that the Venezuelan regime is holding these foreigners as hostages,” Pappier says.

“Overseas governments did the proper factor by condemning the electoral fraud in 2024. And in response, the Maduro regime is extorting them by holding their nationals in jail and forcing them to interact with the Maduro regime for his or her launch.”

Manuel Tique was working for a humanitarian group known as the Danish Refugee Council when he traveled to Venezuela final yr. He had been requested to ship a workshop to native assist teams on find out how to monitor meals and drugs distribution.

However Tique was arrested at a border publish whereas looking for entry into Venezuela, and was not heard from for weeks, in what quantities to a pressured disappearance, in keeping with human rights teams.

“We misplaced contact with him on Sept. 14 [of last year],” says his sister Diana Tique. “And solely acquired information of him on Oct. 17, when Venezuelan officers spoke about him on TV.” Venezuela’s highly effective inside minister, Diosdado Cabello, accused Tique of being a mercenary who was in Venezuela to recruit fighters for an anti-government mission.

In a yr, Tique has solely been allowed to make two telephone calls. He is presently in a jail often known as Rodeo One, the place inmates are hardly ever allowed to depart their cells.

Víctor Manuel Tique retains a photograph of his son Manuel Alejandro Tique on his telephone. Manuel Alejandro from Bogotá, Colombia, has been locked up in a Venezuelan jail for the previous yr.

Manuel Rueda for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Manuel Rueda for NPR

“It is heart-wrenching,” says his father, Víctor Manuel, “as a result of it is a scenario that you simply can not management.”

Human rights teams say that it is not clear what the Venezuelan authorities needs in trade for Tique, or among the different foreigners in Venezuelan jails.

However some say that as Maduro’s grip on energy comes below stress, his authorities is more likely to take extra prisoners.

“It is an act of desperation,” says David Guillaume, a nurse from Florida who spent 4 months in Rodeo One — and shared a cell with Tique, the place the 2 inmates coped with boredom and nervousness by enjoying chess with items they made out of bathroom paper.

Guillaume says he was arrested in September of final yr after attempting to enter Venezuela as a vacationer.

He was freed in January, together with 5 different Individuals, after a Trump envoy met with Maduro and mentioned attainable financial sanctions reduction.

“My American privilege type of made me chill, as a result of I noticed I wasn’t going to be there for a very long time,” Guillaume says. “So I attempted to study the names and nationalities of the folks there” to relay the data to overseas governments and human rights teams.

However whereas negotiations to free prisoners have labored in some circumstances, they’ll additionally make issues worse, says Laura Dib, a human rights lawyer on the Washington Workplace on Latin America (WOLA), a suppose tank and advocacy group.

“It really creates a really harmful setting wherein anybody may be detained,” Dib says, including that the Venezuelan authorities has realized there are advantages from preserving worldwide hostages.

“Looking for different methods to stress with out essentially negotiating and giving an authoritarian authorities what they need could be very, crucial,” she says.

At his dwelling in Bogotá, Víctor Manuel Tique exhibits a photograph of his son Manuel Alejandro, who has been in a Venezuelan jail for the previous twelve months and is detained with out trial.

Manuel Rueda for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Manuel Rueda for NPR

Dib factors out that a number of nations are actually issuing journey warnings, telling their residents to not go to Venezuela because of the big variety of foreigners imprisoned there with out trial.

Again in Bogotá, the Tique household says they need the Colombian authorities to be extra vocal concerning the launch of its residents — and to hyperlink commerce and safety cooperation to their freedom.

However with American naval forces gathering off Venezuela’s coast, fears are intensifying over what this rising present of power may imply for the prisoners — trapped between fragile diplomacy and the prospect of armed confrontation.

“What has occurred to us is an injustice,” says Víctor Manuel Tique. “And it would not assist to enhance Venezuela’s scenario.”