CARACAS — Venezuelan Interior Minister and PSUV Secretary General Diosdado Cabello denied on Monday, August 24, that the release of political prisoners has ever been part of the U.S.-brokered dialogue between the government and an opposition faction, even as the timing of recent excarcelaciones, prisoner release measures, and mounting pressure from human rights organizations have raised questions about that account.
Speaking at the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela’s weekly press conference, Cabello was direct: “Jamás se han tocado esos temas dentro de la mesa,” — “Those topics have never been touched at the table.”
Asked specifically about the connection between the excarcelaciones and the ongoing mesa de diálogo, he insisted the negotiations have addressed a distinct, clearly defined set of issues that does not include the prisoner-release question. He went further, questioning the motives of the NGOs pressing for the inclusion of such issues, remarking that both opposition figures and human rights organizations “facturan y cobran, unos con plata y otros políticamente” — a characterization that dismissed NGO advocacy on the issue as self-interested rather than substantive.