French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Venezuela had released Camilo Castro, a French citizen who was arrested by the Venezuelan regime on June 26. Jean-Noël Barrot, the foreign minister, said Castro had left Venezuela and returned to France.
Camilo Castro is 41 years old and is a yoga teacher. He was arrested on the border between Venezuela and Colombia, the country where he lives. He was a victim of the Venezuelan regime’s so-called “hostage diplomacy,” which arrests foreign nationals to extract concessions from their government. This is the same reason why Italian aid worker Alberto Trentini was imprisoned in Venezuela for more than a year. Castro was held in the same prison as Trentini, Rodeo I, in Caracas. It is unclear how the negotiations that led to Castro’s release proceeded.
– Read also: Trentini’s mother accused the government of not doing enough to free her son
