9 freed in prisoner exchange with U.S.

Venezuela on Saturday freed seven Americans imprisoned in the country in exchange for the release of two nephews of President Nicholás Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years by the United States on drug smuggling convictions, a senior U.S. official said.

The swap of the Americans, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, is the largest trade of detained citizens ever carried out by the Biden administration. It amounts to a rare gesture of goodwill by Maduro as the socialist leader looks to rebuild relations with the U.S. after vanquishing most of his domestic opponents.

Those freed include five employees of Citgo based in Houston — Tomeu Vadell, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano, Jorge Toledo and Jose Pereira — who were lured to Venezuela in 2017 to attend a meeting at the headquarters of the company’s parent, state-run-oil giant PDVSA. Once there, they were hauled away by masked security agents.

Also released was Matthew Heath, a former U.S. Marine corporal from Tennessee who was arrested in 2020 in Venezuela on what the State Department has called “specious” weapons charges, and a Florida man, Osman Khan, who was arrested in January.

The U.S. freed Franqui Flores and his cousin Efrain Campo, nephews of “First Combatant” Cilia Flores, as Maduro has called his wife. The men were arrested in Haiti in a Drug Enforcement Administration sting in 2015. Both were granted clemency by President Biden before the release.