Six executives for Houston-based Citgo have been held in Venezuelan prisons for more than two years without trial.
A few days before Thanksgiving, Tomeu Vadell received a phone call summoning him to Venezuela for a hastily convened budget meeting of the Citgo oil firm that had employed him for more than 30 years.
And last week they were moved to harsher facilities after President Trump’s red-carpet treatment of a key Venezuelan opposition leader during the State of the Union address. Gabriela Zambrano, whose father Alirio Zambrano was arrested along with Vadell and the others, said the families’ agony is compounded by the mystery behind the motivations for the arrests.
Their supporters believed a breakthrough might have been on the horizon late last year when Venezuelan authorities moved the men from basement cells in a notorious prison to a series of private homes. Though referred to by officials as “house arrest,” the detention remained highly restrictive, with constant surveillance from intelligence agents in unfamiliar surroundings.
Elliott Abrams, the administration’s point man for Venezuela, said he could not say for sure that the transfer was in retaliation for Guaido’s treatment in Washington. Some of the executives’ supporters, however, have no doubt. Lawyers for the Citgo 6 argue that even under Venezuelan law, a person cannot be held for two years without trial.
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