Experts agree that the Executive Order signed by President Joe Biden, which seeks to strengthen efforts to bring hostages and unjustly detained US citizens to their homes, could be used as a “legal floor” to maintain direct negotiations with Chavismo in exchange for release US hostages held in Venezuela.
Biden this week signed an order based on the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage Accountability Act of 2020, which focuses on bolstering support for family members of detainees and allows federal agencies to impose sanctions on responsible individuals and governments. of “unjust arrests”.
For the political scientist and strategic director of the consultancy PoliticsEnderson Sequera, the measure that defines the “taking of hostages and the unjust detention” of Americans abroad as a threat to the national security of the United States, could also pave the way for a progressive lifting of sanctions on the government of President Nicolás Maduro, “justified by this new mandate for the release of hostages.”
“In relation to the Venezuelan case, this new order reinforces and legitimizes the efforts of the Biden administration to maintain a direct negotiation with Chavismo” in exchange for freeing the Americans detained in Venezuela, he exposes.
Increased pressure on authoritarian regimes
In Sequera’s opinion, it is possible that the order was designed to “increase pressure” on authoritarian regimes that have American hostages in their territory, however, he estimates that it could have an “opposite effect.”
“It will increase the incentives of authoritarian regimes to take American hostages abroad, knowing that with these types of tactics they gain the attention of the American government,” he says.
In addition, he considers that, in the case of Chavismo, the measure only reinforces its strategy of maintaining direct negotiations with the Biden administration.
“An exchange of sanctions for hostages, and decreases the incentives to resume the negotiation in Mexico with the Unitary Platform”, he points out.
For the internationalist Juan Francisco Contreras, “it is not a good idea” to use the mechanism to negotiate “some things” and he believes that the Executive Order could produce new actions against countries that use North American citizens to exert pressure.
Contreras also considers it worrisome that Venezuela has been included in the letter D of alert on countries where travelers can be unfairly detained.
“The US is issuing a warning to a group of countries that are considered rogue countries, countries outside international law such as Myanmar, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. That unfortunately Venezuela is on that list is something to reflect on, ”she laments.
Shortly after the visit to Caracas of a White House delegation made up, among other personalities, of Biden’s special envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, Juan Guaidó, recognized as interim president by dozens of countries, denounced, without specifying figures, that Venezuela is one of the countries with the highest number of “kidnapped North Americans”.
Guaidó stressed earlier this month that the presence of Carstens “directly makes Maduro the kidnapper not only of Americans” but of “hundreds” of Venezuelans.
Days before the arrival of US officials, relatives of Matthew Heath, a former US Marine detained in Venezuela since 2020, denounced that he tried to take his own life in his cell at the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) and the human rights activist , Tamara Suju, denounced that he was transferred to the Military Hospital in the Venezuelan capital.
Maduro announced that a US delegation traveled to Caracas to address “various issues” and give “continuity to communications” initiated during the first visit on March 5, when he met with a delegation led by Juan González, adviser to President Joe Biden for address, among other issues, aspects of “energy security”.
At that time, after the first meeting that was made public, two American citizens who were detained in Venezuela, including one of the 6 former CITGO executives, were released and returned to their country.
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