Venezuela releases YouTube influencer

A popular Venezuelan YouTube influencer who was arrested on suspicion of terrorism has been released, the government said Monday. Police arrested the US-based video creator — whose full name is Oscar Alejandro Perez Martinez but who goes by Oscar Alejandro — at Caracas airport on Sunday as he was about to travel to Canaima, the national park that is home to Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall.

He was released on condition he make himself available to prosecutors and the courts if they summon him, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The family of Perez Martinez said he had been accused of “activities related to terrorism.”

Saab said the influencer was arrested over a video he published on social media which, the attorney general said, shows a “financial building” and “urges that it be blown up with explosives.” He was referring to a video in which Perez Martinez shows part of a building housing computer servers that are used by Venezuela’s banks.

Narrating the video, he says: “Get a load of this: if a bomb were thrown at this building, the whole national banking system would collapse.” Following his release, Perez Martinez, who has nearly two million subscribers on YouTube and more than 580,000 followers on Instagram, posted a video describing his arrest as the “worst 32 hours” of his life.

“I told the judge that I deeply love my country and anything I said on my social networks was taken out of context... because I would be incapable of issuing a call that would affect my beloved people of my country and disturb public order,” he said. “In no way did I want to call for terror,” he said. His videos document his visits to tourist sites around the world and his interactions with locals.