Venezuela's acting president vows to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro

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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Wednesday vowed to continue releasing prisoners detained under former President Nicolás Maduro during her first press briefing since Maduro was ousted by the United States earlier this month.

Addressing journalists from a red carpet at the presidential palace, Rodríguez struck a conciliatory tone and said the Venezuelan government was entering a “new political moment." She offered assurances that the process of releasing hundreds of detainees — a move reportedly made at the behest of the Trump administration — "has not yet concluded.” The releases have drawn criticism for being too slow and secretive.

“This opportunity is for Venezuela and for the people of Venezuela to be able to see reflected a new moment where coexistence, where living together, where recognition of the other allows building and erecting a new spirituality,” Rodríguez said in the address, which lasted just over five minutes. She took no questions.

Flanked by her brother and National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, she also criticized organizations that advocate on behalf of prisoners’ rights. She pledged “strict” enforcement of the law and credited Maduro with starting the prisoner releases as a signal that her government meant no wholesale break from the past.

“Crimes related to the constitutional order are being evaluated,” she said, in apparent reference to detainees held on what human rights groups say are politically motivated charges. “Messages of hatred, intolerance, acts of violence will not be permitted.”

Despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term, President Donald Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil sales. To ensure the former Maduro loyalist does his bidding, he threatened Rodríguez with a “situation probably worse than Maduro,” who faces federal charges of drug-trafficking from a Brooklyn jail.

In endorsing Rodríguez, Trump sidelined María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition who won a Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to restore the nation’s democracy.

After dismissing her as lacking the sufficient support and respect to govern, Trump said he’ll meet Machado in the Oval Office on Thursday for the first time since Maduro’s capture. The meeting is seen as a key opportunity for Machado to press Trump on her hopes for a democratic transition in Venezuela.

After a lengthy career serving as Maduro's close confidant and representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage, Rodríguez now walks a tightrope, navigating pressures from both Washington and her hardline colleagues who hold direct sway over the security forces.

Those tensions were on display in her speech Wednesday, which focused only on the issue of prisoner releases. Venezuela’s leading prisoner rights organization, Foro Penal, has verified at least 68 prisoners freed since her interim government promised to release a “significant number” of prisoners.

Foro Penal reported the release of at least a dozen prisoners on Wednesday, including political activist Nicmer Evans. Machado campaign staffers Julio Balza and Gabriel González, whose detentions were considered to be for political reasons, were also freed on Wednesday, the opposition leader’s party announced.

But it was Maduro who first started the process of releasing prisoners, Rodríguez said, apparently pushing back on White House claims that the prisoners were being freed due to U.S. pressure. She said Maduro oversaw the release of 194 prisoners in December of last year because he “was thinking precisely about opening spaces for understanding, for coexistence, for tolerance.”

She claimed her own caretaker government had released 406 detainees, without offering any evidence.

She did not address human rights groups' complaints over her government's lack of transparency and instead criticized such groups as having “tried to sell falsehoods about Venezuela.”

“There will always be those who want to fish in troubled waters,” she said, adding that her speech was as an effort to counter false narratives.

Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, running Venezuela’s feared intelligence service and managing its crucial oil industry. A 56-year-old lawyer and politician, Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president two days after the Trump administration snatched Maduro from his fortified compound and claimed the U.S. would be calling the shots in Venezuela.