Venezuela Frees Key Opposition Figures as Government Courts U.S. Support

The release of around 35 political prisoners comes amid closer cooperation between Washington and the interim government.Juan Pablo Guanipa, center, a Venezuelan opposition politician, outside El Helicoide detention center in Caracas after his release on Sunday.Credit...Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/ReutersFeb. 8, 2026, 7:51 p.m. ETVenezuela on Sunday freed a group of prominent opposition leaders, including Juan Pablo Guanipa and Perkins Rocha, according to statements from the country’s press union, the political opposition party, and relatives of the freed prisoners.“After more than eight months of unjust imprisonment and more than a year and a half of being separated, our entire family will soon be able to embrace each other again,” Ramón Guanipa Linares, Mr. Guanipa’s son, wrote on social media.Authorities released at least 35 political prisoners on Sunday, according to the rights group Foro Penal, which last week said that more than 650 were detained.The government made no official statement about the releases, but Venezuela’s de facto leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has said in recent days she would close El Helicoide, an infamous prison that rights groups have described as a torture center, and has announced plans for a mass amnesty law.The highly anticipated release of prisoners has strengthened tentative hopes that Venezuela’s interim government may be moving away from the most repressive practices of its deposed president, Nicolás Maduro.Since the United States captured Mr. Maduro last month, his former vice president, Ms. Rodríguez, has moved quickly to realign Venezuela with Washington.Ms. Rodríguez has worked closely with the Trump administration, redirecting oil exports toward the United States and consolidating power domestically by dismissing officials seen as loyal to Mr. Maduro.The prisoner release comes just days after Venezuelan security agents questioned two prominent businessmen, Raúl Gorrín and Alex Saab, both of whom have ties to Mr. Maduro and have faced money laundering charges in the United States. Their overnight detention in the capital, Caracas, was seen as sign of a deepening cooperation between the two countries.ImageThe scene outside El Helicoide on Sunday after the news came that Mr. Guanipa had been released.Credit...Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/ReutersBut it is still uncertain if Sunday’s prisoner release signals a broader opening of political freedom, and there is some skepticism about whether Ms. Rodríguez can be the person who dismantles the same authoritarian system that she benefited from.Analysts say the true test will be whether former prisoners and exiled opponents are allowed to protest, organize politically and criticize the government without facing retaliation. The long-term goal is credible elections.“It almost looks like they want to open up just enough to score points with Washington, but not enough to risk their grip on power,” said Geoff Ramsey, who studies Colombia and Venezuela at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institute.But others see the releases as a genuine shift by the interim government, after years in which members of the opposition endured being arrested, disappeared and tortured, or were forced to flee into exile.“There is a clear political will on the part of the Rodríguez government to move away from an intransigent and intolerant stance toward the opposition,” said Colette Capriles, a political analyst at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.In an interview weeks before his detention in August 2024, Mr. Rocha expressed anguish for his colleagues who were detained. He said he was in a highly secure location but fully aware that authorities could be trying to locate him.“Our last tool — the only one we have left at this moment — is to cling to our principles and convictions,” he said. “Never before have we realized so fully that this civic struggle truly goes all the way to the end.”He expressed openness to a dialogue and agreement between the opposition and the Maduro government. Without it, he said, Venezuela would enter “a downward spiral — a spiral of illegitimate institutions — and the conflict will not end.”On social media, María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s de facto opposition leader who remains in exile, welcomed the release of her “comrades in struggle” and the end to their “many months of captivity and injustice.”They longed, Ms. Machado said, “to work side by side for the Venezuela we have dreamed of for years — and that we are now very close to building.”Genevieve Glatsky is a reporter for The Times, based in Bogotá, Colombia.SKIP