“Camilo Castro is free.” Emmanuel Macron this Sunday morning announced the release of French citizens detained in Venezuela since June. “I share the relief with his loved ones and thank everyone who worked for his release,” he reacted to X.
The 41-year-old French-Chilean man, who lives in Colombia, was arrested four months ago in Venezuela, on the border with Colombia, “without reason and without his consular rights being respected”, his relatives warned.
On June 26, he sent them a voice message that he was going to the Paraguachón border post for a visa, Amnesty International reported. “I didn’t know how I was going to solve this problem,” he explained later.
El Rodeo Prisoner
The man who grew up in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) wanted to settle permanently in Colombia, where he built a house not far from the territory of the Kogi Amerindians, a people established in Colombia for 500 years. He is known among farmers and tourists, “for his austere lifestyle and his work as a yoga teacher”, according to a Colombian newspaper.
From France, his mother Hélène Boursier and stepfather, Yves Gilbert, took steps to find out his whereabouts. According to Libération, the forty-year-old man is in El Rodeo prison, several tens of kilometers from Caracas. He is the fourth Frenchman to be detained in Venezuela in recent months.
