American prisoners released from Venezuela and Iran
Seven Americans held in Venezuela for years were on their way home Saturday after President Joe Biden agreed to grant clemency to two nephews of Cilia Flores, Venezuela's first lady, who were sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States, officials said.
At the same time, Iran on Saturday released Siamak Namazi, a 51-year-old dualnational Iranian American businessman who has been jailed since 2015, on a renewable furlough and lifted the travel ban on his father, Baquer Namazi, an 85-yearold former official for the United Nations, according to the family's lawyer.
A senior official in the Biden administration said the timing of the two announcements was coincidental.
U.S. officials said the two Venezuelans known as the “narco nephews” — Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas — were flown to a third country Saturday at the same time that a plane carrying the Americans landed in the same country, which officials would not name.
A senior administration official called the president's action to grant clemency “a tough decision and a painful decision,” but said it was the only way to persuade Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to release the Americans.
Officials declined to say whether the prisoner swap represented a thaw in the strained relationship between the United States and the Maduro-led government in Venezuela. The United States has imposed sanctions on Maduro's government as it presses for negotiations between Maduro and Juan Guaidó, the former National Assembly leader whom the United States considers Venezuela's legitimate interim president.
The release of the Namazis comes as negotiations over returning to a deal to limit Iran's nuclear capabilities have bogged down. U.S. officials have long insisted that prisoner talks are not connected to the talks to revive the 2015 deal.
The White House made no official mention of the actions by Iran on Saturday. In a statement, Biden did not mention the release of the Venezuelan drug smugglers.
But he welcomed home the Americans: Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, Jose Pereira, Matthew Heath and Osman Khan.
“These individuals will soon be reunited with their families and back in the arms of their loved ones where they belong,” Biden said in the statement. “Today, we celebrate that seven families will be whole once more.”
The announcement was the latest in a series of prisoner swaps that Biden has agreed to since taking office in an aggressive attempt to bring home Americans that the State Department has designated as wrongfully detained abroad.
But it is also likely to be another flashpoint in the debate about whether it is a good idea to release criminals convicted of significant crimes in exchange for detained Americans. In April, Biden agreed to swap Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot, for Trevor Reed, an American held in Russia since 2019.
Biden has authorized officials to release Viktor Bout, who is known as the “Merchant of Death” and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for conspiring to sell weapons, in exchange for detained Americans Paul Whelan, a businessman, and Brittney Griner, a professional basketball player.
Officials have said that the Russian government has not said whether it will accept that deal.