Venezuela accuses El Salvador of human trafficking as prisoners caught in row between authoritarians
Source: The Guardian
Venezuela accuses El Salvador of human trafficking as prisoners caught in row between authoritarians
Nayib Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador for 252 prisoners in Venezuela
Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Mon 21 Apr 2025 21.29 BST
Last modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 22.12 BST
Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.
Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number … of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted.
Hours later the proposal was rebuffed by one of Maduro’s top allies, the attorney general Tarek William Saab. In a televised address, Saab claimed the Salvadorian’s “cynical” offer exposed him as a narcissistic “neo-Nazi” who had “kidnapped” more than 250 Venezuelan migrants sent to a maximum-security jail in El Salvador by the Trump administration since mid-March.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/venezuela-el-salvador-bukele-maduro-prisoners
Alternate link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-accuses-el-salvador-human-202900548.html