Venezuela’s government said Monday that 116 prisoners have been released “in the past few hours,” though rights groups reported a lower figure.
The statement from the Penitentiary Services Ministry follows three days of reports from rights organizations about delays in the releases, which the Foro Penal group said earlier Monday had reached only 41, including 24 people freed overnight.
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado met with Pope Leo XIV in a private audience at the Vatican on Monday.
The meeting, which hadn't been previously included in the list of Leo's planned appointments, was later listed by the Vatican in its daily bulletin, without adding details.
Machado is touring Europe and the U.S. after she re-emerged in December to accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.
Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, has called for Venezuela to remain an independent country after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his compound in Caracas and flew him to New York to face federal charges of drug-trafficking.
Leo had said he was following the developments in Venezuela with “deep concern” and urged the protection of human and civil rights.
Venezuela's opposition, backed by consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations in the U.S., had vowed for years to immediately replace Maduro with one of their own and restore democracy to the oil-rich country. But President Donald Trump delivered them a heavy blow by allowing Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, to assume control.
Most opposition leaders, including Machado, are in exile or prison.
The prisoner releases come after a week of political turmoil in Caracas. Those freed had been “deprived of their liberty for acts associated with disrupting the constitutional order and undermining the stability of the nation,” the Penitentiary Services Ministry said.
The release of hundreds of political prisoners in the South American country is a long-running demand of human rights groups, international bodies and opposition figures.
Machado, who is expected to meet with Trump this week, has been one of the main voices calling for the release of prisoners who include some of her close allies.
The head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, the acting president’s brother, said Thursday that a significant number of prisoners, both foreign and Venezuelan, would be released.
According to Foro Penal, at least 800 people were being held as political prisoners at the beginning of the year in Venezuela. The government denies that there are any political detainees.
