After months of secret talks between Washington and Caracas, the Venezuelan government released seven Americans detained in that country, including five oil business executives, in exchange for two relatives of Cilia Flores, the country's first lady, who were sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for trafficking cocaine to the United States.
This exchange, the largest carried out by the Biden administration, is not the only one that was known this Saturday. In parallel, Iran released Siamak Namazi, a 51-year-old businessman and dual Iranian-American national. He had been imprisoned since 2015. They also lifted the travel ban on his father, Baquer Nanzi, 85, a former United Nations representative.
According to the government, the announcement of the operations at the time was a coincidence. President Joe Biden approved the exchange with the executive of Nicolás Maduro a few weeks ago and the process required a period of time to establish the mechanisms. It was not known until this Saturday, when the planes took off from both capitals with the prisoners and headed to a third country where the exchange took place.
On the flight that left Washington were the "narco nephews", Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas. The seven Americans were in the one that left Caracas. "Today, after years of unjust detention in Venezuela, we bring home Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, José Luis Zambrano, José Pereira, Matthew Heath and Osma Khan," Biden said in a statement.
"It is a priority of my administration to prevent Americans from having to endure the unimaginable pain of being held hostage or being unjustly imprisoned," the president stressed. White House sources indicated that it was a difficult and painful decision for Biden to offer clemency to the two convicted of drug trafficking, but it was the only way to convince Maduro to release the Americans.
The Zambrano, Vadell, Toledo and Pereira brothers were employees of the Citgo oil company, with headquarters in Houston (Texas). In 2017, they were attending a meeting in Venezuela when masked agents burst into the room. Heath, a former Marine, was arrested in 2020 on what the United States called "spurious weapons charges," while Khan, from Florida, was arrested in January.
The nephews of the first lady were arrested in Haiti, in an operation against drug trafficking carried out by the DEA in 2015. They were accused of trying to bring a shipment of cocaine into the US.
Venezuela also issued its statement confirming the exchange. There it was explained that "two young Venezuelans unjustly imprisoned in the United States" had been released as part of talks between the two governments that began last March.
Some noted that this was a new step in the attempt to normalize relations between the two countries. In March, two Americans were released after a high-level US delegation visited Caracas, the first since diplomatic relations were severed in 2019 and the Trump administration recognized Juan Guaidó as interim president.
