CARACAS (Reuters) -Two U.S. citizens have been arrested in Venezuela, part of a group of seven who President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday branded as “mercenaries,” in the latest roundup ahead of the embattled leader’s expected inauguration to a new term later this week.
Maduro said the detained U.S. citizens were “very high level,” but did not provide further details or evidence of the arrests.
“Just today we’ve captured seven foreign mercenaries, including two important mercenaries from the United States,” said Maduro, who is set to take office for a third term on Friday following last July’s contested election that the opposition says it won in a landslide.
Maduro said the group of detainees includes two Colombians who he said were captured in unspecified parts of Venezuela, as well as three others who came from the war in Ukraine. He did provide further detail.
Neither the U.S. Department of State nor Colombia’s foreign ministry immediately responded to requests for comment.
Venezuelan rights groups have warned of a revolving door of prisoners, with fresh detentions coming in even as older prisoners are released, including arrests of foreign nationals.
In late 2023, Venezuela’s government released dozens of prisoners including 10 Americans after months of negotiations between Caracas and Washington, while the U.S. released a close ally of Maduro, Colombian businessman Alex Saab.
In remarks delivered from the Miraflores presidential palace, Maduro on Tuesday claimed that his government’s security forces have captured what he called 125 foreign mercenaries from 25 different countries who he said had entered the South American nation “to practice terrorism against the Venezuelan people.”
The remarks come as opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez is touring the region in a bid to grow his international support. Gonzalez has been declared president-elect by several governments in the region, including the United States.
On Monday, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden said Gonzalez was the “true winner” of the July 28 vote.
While the government-aligned electoral authority and Venezuela’s top court have decreed that Maduro won the election, the government has not released ballot-box level results to back up the claim.
The opposition, however, has published thousands of scanned copies of voting machine receipts its observers gathered days after the vote, accounting for over 80% of votes cast and showing a lopsided Gonzalez victory.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera; Additional reporting by Ryan Jones and Oliver Griffin; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Sarah Morland and Leslie Adler)
