By not prioritizing the release of hundreds of political prisoners in Venezuela, the US administration of Donald Trump is putting their lives at risk in the country’s transition plan, says the mother of two brothers who are being held and tortured.
Marisela Parra, 49, said she was happy to have the US president of Venezuela. Nicholas Maduro during the military offensive on Saturday. However, the US has abandoned the governance structure and believes Parra still poses a serious threat to those detained for political reasons.
“The priority in this transition is oil and trade, then they talk about political prisoners,” Parra said in a phone interview with CBC News.
“How can there be a transition when there are political prisoners, people who are suffering under the regime or disappeared, and the regime continues?”
Venezuelan human rights group Foro Penal says there are currently more. 800 political prisoners in Venezuela. The Venezuelan government released 54 political prisoners on January 1, 2026. According to the organization.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a three-step plan for Venezuela on Wednesday.
Venezuela’s government is headed by Maduro’s former vice president, Delsy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as president on Monday. Most of the other key players in the government will remain in place, including Rodríguez’s brother Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
All branches of power, from the legislative branch to the judiciary to the military, remain subordinate. Rule control.
“We know that Donald Trump is a businessI’m glad he took the man and his head (Maduro), but he left cancer behind,” said Parra, who is currently in Colombia, but did not want to reveal her exact location for security reasons.
One child was punished by the other’s actions
Parra fled the country in April 2019 after receiving threats after her youngest son defected from the National Guard. The para division of Leandro Leomar Chirinos was involved in helping to free opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez from house arrest. Leandro went underground.
After the 31-year-old Leandro betrayed him, In May 2020, he participated in Operation Gideon, which involved American mercenaries in the Maduro coup attempt. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison for his role in the failed plot.
Marisela Parra says she broke up with her son on August 5, 2025 and hasn’t heard from him since.
“They took it away,” she said.
Parra said her eldest son, Leonardo David Chirinos Parra, 33, was punished by Venezuelan authorities for his younger brother’s actions.
Leonardo, a member of Venezuela’s counter-intelligence agency, was arrested on April 20, 2020 and tortured to give up information on his younger brother, Marisela Parra said.
She says she lost touch with Leonardo for nine days.Until he catches her on a video call begging her to give up Leandro’s cell phone number.
“They are going to kill him and the rest of his family[in the country],” she said.
Marisela Parra took screenshots of the video call and posted them online and lost contact with her daughter for months.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights considered the case at the time and decided that Leonardo Parra was “in a serious and urgent situation” and that his “rights to life and personal integrity” could be “irreparably damaged”.
Parra said her eldest son was tortured while in prison, with electric shocks, beatings and suffocation with a bag over his head. She said her oldest son was particularly ill-treated while being held in a prison at the Fuerte Guaicaipuro military facility, about 60 kilometers south of the capital, Caracas.
The temperature in the region is often high and the prison guards forced the prisoners to dig and then stand in a pit.
“They stood there and planted like a tree,” she said. “They stay there until they can dig themselves out of the holes.”
Leonardo WHe was transferred from Guaicaipuro a year ago and is now in a prison called Yare III, 70 kilometers southeast of Caracas.
She last spoke to her son in November 2024, as he was not allowed to make calls outside of Venezuela. The family has not heard from him since the US attack at the end of the week.
“My children’s story is very difficult, very difficult and painful,” Parra said.
In the year There has been a wave of arrests in the wake of the 2024 elections.
Jesus Hermoso with the Committee for the Liberation of Social Activists said that within hours of the US attack on Venezuela, his organization issued a statement saying that the first step in any transition process should be a general amnesty and the release of all political prisoners.
“(The regime) has continued its repressive policy… We hope that with this (US) pressure, there would have been a significant relaxation in the cases of kidnapping,” Hermoso said. However, there is nothing to show that this is happening.
Hermoso, a journalist, fled the country three months ago with his wife and two young children when they were told government officials wanted to arrest him. He said that the head of the humanitarian organization where his wife works has also been arrested recently.
His organization has documented various cases of sexual abuse by authorities in Venezuelan prisons, including torture.
“These cases are difficult to document, because many prisoners do not want to denounce this after their release,” Hermoso said. Many choose not to say anything or ask that it be kept confidential.
It is one of the last major waves of political arrests following the July 28, 2024 election, which many observers agree is the victory of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.onSpeed
According to Amnesty International, by the end of 2024, approximately 160 members of Venezuela’s main opposition party and 34 members of the smaller Primero Justicia party had been arrested or disappeared by Venezuelan authorities.
One of the targets of the attack, Luis Carrero, one of the top coordinators of the opposition campaign in the western state of Tachira, managed to escape.
Carrero said he was constantly under surveillance.
“They were always following us, the repressive forces of the state,” said Carrero, whose case was investigated by Human Rights Watch.
Carrero and his wife, who participated in the campaign, worked away from home for weeks. But on July 27, 2024, a day before the polls, in the wee hours of the morning, five men armed with guns and with their faces covered came back home to grab some things.
“They beat my wife,” he said. “I tried to run to warn my neighbours, but to protect the data on my mobile phone, as the campaign chief, I could not delete many important data (in Tachira).”
Carrero manages to throw his cell phone onto the roof of a neighbor’s house, but freezes when he hears gunshots. Agents arrested him and took him home. One of them found his mobile.
Carrero, who now lives in Cucuta, Colombia, said: “If there is violence after the election, we will be responsible. They said they know where my family lives.”
The next day, Carrero and his wife went out and voted. They also helped collect the printed tallies produced by the voting machines from polling stations across the state. The opposition gathered more than 70 percent of the tally in the first 24 hours, and the results indicated a major victory for Gonzalez.onSpeed
“Many of those (who worked on the campaign) paid with their lives. Many of them paid for their freedom… for being part of the structure (that collected the tallies), for being witnesses in the electoral process or for going out… to protest what happened, the theft of the will of Venezuelans,” Carrero said.
“It is appropriate to recognize their struggle.”