Venezuelan authorities detained Darmovzal in September 2024, alleging that he was about to take part in a plot to kill authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro and overthrow the government there. Czech diplomacy has said that such claims lack any real basis.
With a similar pretext, the Venezuelan authorities detained other foreign citizens. The Czech citizen was identified by the non-governmental organization Foro Penal as a person detained for political purposes.
According to Macinka, Čech was released with a group of other prisoners from Ireland, Romania, Germany, Albania, Ukraine and the Netherlands. “We are sending a plane there that is already in the air,” the minister said. He already gave it away Macinky he was on the phone with his family and is in a fairly satisfactory state of mind and health. There is a doctor and a psychologist on board the Czech plane. According to Macinka, Darmovzal should return to the Czech Republic within a few days.
The father of the imprisoned Czech, Oldřich Darmovzal, told ČTK today that he does not yet know when his son will arrive in the Czech Republic. The family has information about the release, Minister Macinka called them. “After those days of great tension, this is a great relief for us. Since the announcement by their (Venezuelan) Speaker of the Parliament that they were going to lay off, it took a long time. And the layoffs only happened in small groups. It was tension every day,” said the father.
Venezuela’s government began releasing a larger number of political prisoners last week after the United States kidnapped President Maduro from Caracas in early January and then threatened the new government with another military crackdown. On Wednesday, the Venezuelan opposition published on social network X an updated list of 100 released political prisoners that it has so far managed to confirm. However, Darmovzal was not on the list.
Pavel described the release of Darmovzal as great news
President Petr Pavel described the release of Czech Jan Darmovzal imprisoned in Venezuela as great news. He stated this today on the X network. He also thanked experts in the Czech Republic and foreign partners, including the European Union and the United States, who had been dealing with the case for many months.
“The release of Jan Darmovzal, who was held for almost a year and a half for no reason in the difficult conditions of a Venezuelan prison, is great news that we have been waiting for for a long time,” wrote Pavel. He wished Darmovzal a happy return home and an early reunion with his family.
Venezuelan authorities released 100 political prisoners in a week, according to the opposition
According to the Venezuelan opposition, she was released from the country’s prisons as of Thursday evening a hundred political prisoners released. Most of them were Venezuelans, who, according to the EFE agency, have to comply with various judicial measures even when they are free. On Thursday evening, the non-governmental organization Foro Penal reported on the social network that no one else was released during Thursday. However, according to Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka, Czech citizen Jan Darmovzal, who had been imprisoned there since September last year, was released last night.
“As of 17:00 on January 15, we have not recorded another political prisoner being released from prison since yesterday,” the Foro Penal organization wrote on the X network. “From December 25 to January 1, we have confirmed 117 released (political prisoners) and since January 8 another 84, so in total we can confirm 201 released (political prisoners),” she added. According to this organization, about eight hundred people are still behind bars in Venezuela for political opinions.
Interim President Rodríguez said on Wednesday that 406 people imprisoned for violating the constitutional order had been released from Venezuelan prisons since December, including 187 in December.
Most of the released political prisoners in the last week were Venezuelans, several Spaniards, Italians, Americans, one Hungarian or a man with Israeli and Argentine citizenship were also released.
The Italians described the conditions in a Venezuelan prison
The Italians Alberto Trentini and Mario Burlò have already returned to Rome by government plane after more than a year of imprisonment in Venezuela. An emotional reunion with their families awaited them at the airport. Both men were detained in Venezuela without official charges, and their return home was accompanied by strong emotions and testimonies of inhumane conditions in Venezuelan prisons.
The Venetian humanitarian worker and the Turin businessman were awaited at the airport by their families, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, La Repubblica newspaper reported.
“I was afraid that I would never see my children again, that they would kill me. They forced us to sleep on the floor among cockroaches, five times a week they took us to the yard for an hour. I lost thirty kilos,” Burlò described the conditions in the Venezuelan prison to Corriere della Sera.
