KVIG Informative

Venezuela’s interim government released 131 people detained on political grounds. Marco Rubio called it a crucial step toward reconciliation. Human rights groups answer with a different number: more than 300 are still locked up.

Venezuela’s interim government announced Friday, August 14, the granting of “alternative measures to deprivation of liberty” for 131 people detained for alleged or proven involvement in crimes under Venezuelan law. The move came two days after representatives of the interim government and the opposition concluded a first round of national reconciliation talks, seven months after Nicolás Maduro’s fall.

The Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners documented the release of 25 people tied to the so-called Plaza Venezuela case from El Rodeo I prison, in Guatire, Miranda state, a facility that has faced allegations of torture. Roughly 50 people were arrested in 2025 in that case, accused of terrorism over an alleged plot to overthrow Maduro that included plans to detonate explosives in Caracas.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the decision “a crucial step” toward national reconciliation and said 1,046 Venezuelans have been released since January 3, when U.S. forces captured Maduro in Caracas during a military operation. Rubio said Washington would keep “closely monitoring” the negotiations and compliance with the three-phase plan: stabilization, recovery and transition.

Lead opposition negotiator Dinorah Figuera had pledged the previous Thursday to push for the release of political prisoners following the initial round of talks with the interim government. University Education Minister Ana María Sanjuán told state broadcaster VTV that the case review “has led to several rounds of releases,” aimed at “staying on the path of recognition, reconciliation and the pursuit of democratic coexistence.”

Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado demanded the process go further. “Absolutely everyone, civilians and military alike, must be released now,” she wrote on X. Foro Penal warned that most of those released left under substitute precautionary measures, which include travel bans and mandatory periodic court appearances, not full freedom. “It is an indispensable step that releases have effectively resumed, but the central goal must be that this process doesn’t stop until not a single political prisoner remains behind bars,” said Gonzalo Himiob, Foro Penal’s vice president.

The distinction between release and full freedom is not a technicality. Someone who leaves prison but remains under house arrest, a travel ban, or mandatory court check-ins has not regained the freedom their family is demanding. The government’s own statement did not specify, case by case, which type of measure each of the 131 people received.

Among the individual cases, the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners cited a woman with relatives tied to the Plaza Venezuela case who had been sentenced to 30 years in prison on charges of attempted aggravated homicide, terrorism and treason. After her release, she insisted her fight doesn’t end with her own relatives’ freedom: she is waiting for everyone’s.

Washington counts 1,046 releases since January. Venezuelan rights groups count more than 300 people who, by their records, remain deprived of liberty on political grounds. Both figures can be true at once, and that gap is exactly what separates a reconciliation statement from an empty prison.