By Natalia Siniawski
(Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday he welcomed the successful rescue of five Venezuelan opposition members holed up for political protect in the Argentine embassy in Caracas.
“Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safely on U.S. soil,” Rubio said on X.
The five people, close allies of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, have been living in the embassy since March 2024, after Venezuela’s attorney general accused them of conspiracy and warrants were issued for their arrests.
Venezuela’s information ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brazil’s government, which had been providing political protection to the embassy, said it had not yet been informed.
Rubio did not provide specific details about the operation.
Machado, meanwhile, hailed an “impeccable and epic operation” in a post X.
“We are going to free every one of our 900 imprisoned heroes,” Machado added in reference to different politicians and activists who have been detained in the last year.
The Argentine government said on X that it appreciated the successful operation that allowed the safe transfer of the five Venezuelans sheltered at the embassy to the U.S.
In December 2024, Fernando Martinez, another opposition advisor who had been living at the embassy handed himself in to the attorney general’s office. He died in February this year.
Officials regularly accuse the opposition of conspiring with countries such as the United States to commit terrorism, overthrow Maduro and attack Venezuela’s power grid. The opposition has always denied the accusations.
The Argentine residence is currently under Brazilian custody after Buenos Aires cut relations with Caracas over the 2024 election, which the opposition says it won and for which it has published ballot box level vote tallies.
Maduro was declared the winner by electoral authorities and the country’s top court, though authorities have not offered ballot box level tallies of the votes.
(Reporting by Natalia Siniawski, Julia Symmes Cobb, Lisandra Paraguassu and Jasper Ward and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Sarah Morland and Michael Perry)
