Venezuela Collects More Foreign Hostages

Maduro regime is gathering chips for future prisoner swaps, analysts say

- KEJAL VYAS

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in recent years has secured the freedom of his top financier and two of his relatives in prisoner exchanges with the Biden administration.

Now the regime is stocking up on foreign detainees-including Americans—who analysts say could serve as bargaining chips with the incoming Trump administration and allied governments. More than 50 foreign passport holders have been detained by Venezuela's security forces since the end of July when the regime began its crackdown on opponents who, along with the U.S., say Maduro stole an election. Most of the detainees are being held on allegations of espionage or terrorism.

"The idea of capturing foreigners is to use them later in an effort to force their home countries to accept conditions in negotiations or to trade them," said Gonzalo Himiob, a human-rights lawyer and director of Penal Forum, whose lawyers represent political prisoners in Venezuela. "What we can see is that the Venezuelan government is preparing for a scenario of high confrontation in the weeks and months ahead."

The swelling number of detainees in recent months-more than 2,000 Venezuelans were also detained after the July 28 vote-has alarmed the Biden administration and the United Nations office dealing with forced and arbitrary detentions, which have struggled to get information on the prisoners from Venezuelan authorities, according to people familiar with the matter.

The latest foreigner to be nabbed was Nahuel Gallo, 33 years old, a corporal in Argentina's gendarme police assigned to a border crossing with Chile. Arrested traveling to Venezuela on Dec. 8 to spend the holidays with his wife and toddler, Gallo was accused of terrorism in a case that infuriated Argentine President Javier Milei. His administration calls the detention a kidnapping.