Relatives of political prisoners spent Thursday night and early Friday morning outside a Venezuelan prison, awaiting the announced release of “a significant number of people,” one of the first actions of the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States. Outside Rodeo I prison, located in the Zamora municipality of Miranda state (north, near Caracas), around 50 people spent the night waiting for news of their relatives. News media confirmed that some slept on the ground or in cars, while others remained awake. Some of them said they arrived on Thursday at noon, when Jorge Rodríguez, head of Parliament and brother of Venezuela’s interim president, announced the release of detainees, although he did not specify the number or the conditions, but did say that they were already taking place. “We spent the whole night waiting,” Miliany Castillo, sister of Oswaldo Castillo, told reporters. She said he has been “unjustly detained” for more than 7 years. For its part, the NGO Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners demanded “immediate and verifiable information, respect for families and an end to the use of silence as a mechanism of psychological torture.” “We had a pretty rough night here. We held on to our faith and hope of being able to hug our families again,” he said.
