More than 1,500 political prisoners in Venezuela have applied for amnesty under a newly enacted law, the head of the country’s legislature said on Sunday, two days after the measure came into effect.
National Assembly president Jorge Rodriguez told a press conference that “a total of 1,557 cases are being addressed immediately, and hundreds of people deprived of their freedom are already being released under the amnesty law.”
The amnesty is not automatic: applicants must petition the court handling their cases. On Saturday, lawmaker Jorge Arreaza, who is overseeing the process, said prosecutors had asked judges to free 379 prisoners. So far, around 80 detainees have been freed, Rodriguez told AFP.
All those released so far had been held in the capital, Caracas, he said, without providing further details.
The law was adopted unanimously by the legislature and signed by interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who pushed the legislation after assuming power following the capture of former president Nicolas Maduro during a US military raid in January.
Critics have argued that the law contains exclusions that could prevent some political opponents from benefiting. It explicitly does not apply to those prosecuted for “promoting or facilitating… armed or forceful actions” against Venezuela’s sovereignty by foreign actors — language that has been interpreted as potentially barring figures such as opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado from receiving amnesty.
Outside a national police facility known as Zone 7, relatives of detainees—some of whom have been camped for weeks—waited for word on loved ones’ release. “Let’s hope it’s true,” one woman, Genesis Rojas, told AFP.
Hundreds of others have already been granted conditional release by Rodriguez’s government since the raid that led to Maduro’s capture.
Human rights groups have welcomed the law as a step forward but warned that many political prisoners remain behind bars and that conditions for release vary, calling for broader implementation and clearer protections.
