Caracas.- Camilo Roso, former mayor of a municipality in the Venezuelan state of Táchira (west, bordering Colombia), was released this Thursday after serving more than five years in prison, where he was held accused of having helped then-deputy Juan Guaidó to leave Venezuela in 2019.
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The also activist of the Democratic Action (AD) party pointed out that his family always worried that he would receive medical attention as he is an oncology patient and has suffered two heart attacks. Meanwhile, his wife, Francia de Roso, said she was “very excited” about her husband’s release and noted that he will now have to go to specialist doctors to check his state of health. “It’s been five years and two long months that I’ve been in this fight, I’m from La Fría and I had to come, leave everything behind, to come and wait for my husband,” she said, while also thanking God, the media, and all the other family members who accompanied each other waiting for the release of their relatives. France de Roso indicated that her husband was accused of the crimes of treason and association, but that the court decided to give him full freedom. In September 2019, the then Attorney General of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, requested the arrest of four officials from the state of Táchira, including Roso, whom he accused of having helped the former President of Parliament Juan Guaidó to evade a ban on leaving the country in February of that same year. In January 2019, Guaidó disregarded Nicolás Maduro’s government and proclaimed himself interim president, upon exercising the leadership of the Parliament, dominated by the opposition. For this action, the Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation and prohibited him from leaving the country, a measure that Guaidó circumvented at the end of February 2019 when he appeared in the Colombian city of Cúcuta to lead an attempt to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela. On the other hand, political prisoner José Orlando Ramírez Ramírez was also released, who was detained for almost a year in Rodeo II for a “personal video”. Ramírez said in a brief statement to the media that he was accused of incitement to hatred but after his release he said that “thank God everything is going well”. The NGO Foro Penal on Thursday put the total number of political prisoners in Venezuela at 568 after the latest releases amid a process of liberations that began in January and an amnesty approved a week ago in Parliament.
