Jan 22 (Reuters) - Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of Venezuela's opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, was freed from prison early on Thursday after a year behind bars, Tudare's wife said on X, the latest such release since the U.S. capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
Tudares, a 46-year-old lawyer, was arrested in January 2025 while taking his young children to school in Caracas and accused, like other political detainees, of terrorism, charges their relatives say were unsubstantiated.
"After 380 days of an unjust arbitrary detention and having endured, for more than a year, an inhumane situation of enforced disappearance, my husband Rafael Tudares Bracho has returned home," Mariana Gonzalez de Tudares said on X.
The releases of prisoners, announced earlier this month by Venezuelan authorities, have moved slowly.
So far, rights group Foro Penal said that 151 political prisoners have been released, while families continue to wait anxiously.
Many relatives of detainees - both well-known and lesser-known - have gathered and held vigils outside prisons or have visited multiple detention centers in an effort to find out where their loved ones are being held.
The releases follow Maduro's capture on Jan. 3 in Caracas, his arraignment in a New York court on narcoterrorism charges, his deputy Delcy Rodriguez's interim swearing-in, and the announcement that the U.S. would refine and sell up to 50 million barrels of crude oil stuck in Venezuela under U.S. sanctions.
Among the prominent figures who remain imprisoned are opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa and lawyer Perkins Rocha, both close allies of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado; Freddy Superlano, leader of the opposition party Voluntad Popular; and Javier Tarazona, the director of an NGO.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Philippa Fletcher)
