I am not a fortune teller but just a year ago, in December 2022, I predicted on a television program that Alex Saab would finally be released by the Biden administration. Despite the accusations of money laundering, drug trafficking, being Nicolás Maduro’s front man and knowing all the unspeakable secrets of the Venezuelan dictatorship, in conversation with the journalist Marian de la Fuente and Colonel Octavio Pérez, I risked ensure that the Democratic government would facilitate the exchange of Saab and that unfortunately the final chapter would be his reception in Caracas as a hero of the Bolivarian cause.
In that interview I complained as so many times about the lack of principles of the rulers when it comes to playing with people’s lives. If Biden had agreed to exchange with Putin the American basketball player Brittney Gringer for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout nicknamed “the merchant of death”, the Saab thing seemed like child’s play.
That said, to make my opinion clear about this power of the rulers to pardon or amnesty criminals at will without any type of control, who would do an exercise to understand the benefits of this decision and look a little ahead of how this could positively impact the citizens of Venezuela and the United States in this hostage exchange.
It seems that in exchange for freeing Saab, Maduro accepted that 36 prisoners, 24 Venezuelans and 12 Americans, regain freedom. Among the Americans locked up in Venezuela are two former Green Berets, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, who were involved in an attempt to overthrow Maduro in 2019. Also detained are Eyvin Hernández, Jerrel Kenemore and Joseph Cristella, accused of entering the country illegally from Colombia. . More recently, Venezuela detained Savoi Wright, a 38-year-old California businessman.
We can be empathetic with all these prisoners who, unlike Saab, most of them did not commit any crime and who have been subjected to processes without any guarantee. Some of them – like María Corina Machado’s collaborators – are literally political prisoners. I also understand all the distressed mothers and families who will no longer be distressed thanks to this exchange. This would be a first benefit even if we have the aftertaste of committing an injustice in exchange for repairing many more.
Something that we must also assume is that Saab’s stay in the United States, his interrogations and investigations, have provided information to complete other ongoing investigations and be able to stop the flow of drug trafficking, money laundering and other illegal businesses that have Venezuela as their origin. and the US as a destination. That is to say, Saab’s criminal figure is deactivated forever.
The third derivative of the exchange is politics. We hope that the movement means the qualification of María Corina Machado as a candidate for the Venezuelan opposition in clean and transparent elections in which she can present herself on equal terms with Maduro. This would also mean maintaining the lifting of economic sanctions with the corresponding benefit – not for Maduro – but for the Venezuelan people.
2024 is an electoral year for Biden and as I commented last week in this column, his policy towards Latin America and specifically in Venezuela will be examined with special interest by the Hispanic minority, which may be more key than ever in these elections.
For this reason and because we are in Christmas, the period of good intentions and the best resolutions, I risk giving the benefit of the doubt to Joe Biden and his administration thinking that this bitter decision to release Saab finally represents progress towards achieving democracy in Venezuela.
