Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has proposed a prisoner exchange with Venezuela, offering to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported from the United States in exchange for \u201cpolitical prisoners.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a post on X, Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelans currently detained in El Salvador\u2019s mega prison for \u201can identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners\u201d he says Venezuela holds, including family members of opposition leaders. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike our detainees, many of whom have committed murder, others have committed rape, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, your political prisoners have committed no crime,\u201d Bukele said in the post, which was directed at Venezuela\u2019s President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \u201cThe only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud.\u201d <\/p>\n
The US and El Salvador say most of the deportees locked up in El Salvador\u2019s Cecot prison are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and some are members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang. But officials have provided scant evidence to show the inmates have ties to those criminal groups. <\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s leader has described the deportation of the mostly Venezuelan migrants as a \u201ckidnapping,\u201d and denied they are criminals while backing calls for their return. <\/p>\n
The Salvadoran leader named some of the \u201cpolitical prisoners\u201d incarcerated in Venezuela, including Rafael Tudares, son-in-law of exiled opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez. <\/p>\n
Gonz\u00e1lez, who fled the country after claiming to have defeated Maduro in July\u2019s presidential election, said his son-in-law was detained in Venezuela\u2019s capital in early January, just days before Maduro was inaugurated. <\/p>\n
He also mentions Corina Parisca de Machado, the mother of Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, who he says is facing political pressure. <\/p>\n
Bukele also proposed swapping four political leaders seeking asylum in the Argentine Embassy in Venezuela. The group has been sheltering at the facility for more than a year, accused of terrorist activities and treason for working with Machado, who says they did nothing wrong. <\/p>\n
Also included in Bukele\u2019s proposed agreement are journalist Roland Carre\u00f1o, lawyer and activist Roc\u00edo San Miguel, and nearly 50 detained citizens from other countries, including the US. <\/p>\n
Bukele\u2019s proposal comes amid heightened scrutiny about the Salvadoran\u2019s willingness to accept hundreds of migrants who the Trump administration claims are gang members or violent criminals. <\/p>\n
One of the region\u2019s most popular leaders, Bukele has called himself \u201cthe world\u2019s coolest dictator\u201d and the \u201cphilosopher king\u201d as he suspends certain civil liberties to go after his country\u2019s gangs. <\/p>\n
That has earned him the ire of international human rights organizations, which allege large-scale abuses in his crackdown on crime. But it has also earned him popularity inside El Salvador; Bukele, 43, won reelection last year by a landslide. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/i> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has proposed a prisoner exchange with Venezuela, offering to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported from the United States in exchange for \u201cpolitical prisoners.\u201d In a post on X, Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelans currently detained in El Salvador\u2019s mega prison for \u201can identical number (252) of the thousands…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}