Five teenagers detained in protests against the July presidential elections in Venezuela have been released from a prison in the state of La Guaira, the NGO Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) confirmed today.
In a post on the social network X, the organization said that the minors were released on Saturday night and shared a video of the young people being reunited with their families outside the detention center.
Four other teenagers remain detained in the same prison, in the state of La Guaira, in northern Venezuela.
"We demand that they be fully released, like all those arbitrarily detained during the post-election protests," the OVP stressed.
On Saturday, the organization reported that four teenagers, also detained in the context of the post-election crisis, were released from a prison in the state of Guárico (central Venezuela), with preventive measures, and that their trial will continue from Caracas.
According to several non-governmental organizations and opposition parties, 1,850 people have been detained in Venezuela since the presidential elections, following protests against the re-election of Nicolás Maduro or police operations, including 69 minors and dozens of women and soldiers, almost all of whom have been charged with crimes such as terrorism and conspiracy.
On November 12, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro asked local authorities to review the judicial processes of teenagers detained in the protests following the July 28 presidential elections, admitting that some type of procedural error may have occurred.
On Friday, Venezuela’s Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had reviewed the cases of 225 of the 2,400 people detained in protests after the presidential elections, and on Saturday, Attorney General Tarek William Saab confirmed that 225 release measures had been “granted and executed” for people detained after the post-election crisis.
The Public Prosecutor's Office published this information on Instagram, hours after several NGOs announced more than a hundred releases since dawn in several prisons in Venezuela, justifying the request for a review of the cases with "exhaustive investigations based on new evidence and evidence collected by prosecutors".
The NGO Foro Penal, one of the organizations that provided assistance to the detainees, said on Saturday that at least 107 people linked to the post-election protests had been released, not including an undetermined number of women released from a women's prison.
The Venezuelan opposition celebrated the release of these people and demanded the definitive release of all those considered "political prisoners" without any type of measure to keep their legal cases open.
Venezuela held presidential elections on July 28, after which the National Electoral Council (CNE) attributed the victory to the country's current President, Nicolás Maduro, with just over 51% of the vote, while the opposition claims that its candidate, former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, obtained almost 70% of the vote.
The Venezuelan opposition and many countries have denounced electoral fraud and demanded that the voting records be presented for independent verification.
The election results were contested in the streets, with demonstrations repressed by security forces, with authorities recording more than 2,400 arrests, 27 deaths and 192 injuries.
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