Javier Giraldo traveled to the Atanasio Girardot Binational Bridge linking Colombia and Venezuela hoping to participate in what he expected would be a direct request for his father’s release. He arrived Friday to show a sign asking for the release of his father, Javier Giraldo García, who he said is detained in Venezuela.
Giraldo’s plan unraveled after a meeting between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodríguez was canceled late Thursday by both governments, both citing unforeseen circumstances without giving details. The canceled meeting, which would have brought the presidents together, left relatives anticipating a handover at the border with nothing to see after the cancellation.
For Giraldo, the Friday disappointment came as a new setback in what he described as repeated lost hopes to secure his father’s transfer. He said it was the third time this year that he and other families faced a broken expectation: first after a U.S. military operation in January that ended with the capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro, and then after the Venezuelan legislature passed an amnesty law for a mass release of political prisoners.
Giraldo said his 70-year-old father has been detained for four years at El Rodeo III prison in Guatire, about 36 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of Caracas. Although he is described by his son as Colombian by birth, Giraldo García lived in Venezuela for three decades before his detention, Giraldo said, after he was captured in Táchira state and held on terrorism-related charges.
Colombian authorities have said Colombians held in Venezuela have been released gradually since last year as part of diplomatic efforts, according to Colombia’s foreign ministry. Still, Foro Penal, a prisoner rights group based in Venezuela, reported that at least eight Colombians and 11 Colombian-Venezuelans remained in detention in Venezuelan prisons, leaving families continuing to press for additional releases.
On Friday, some relatives protested sporadically despite the meeting cancellation, including a group near the Atanasio Girardot Binational Bridge. Ninfa Rebolledo told reporters that her son, Albeiro Guevara, remained hopeful for a speedy release, and she said he has been imprisoned for more than six years on charges she described as “aggravated trafficking in transport,” a case her son maintains he did not commit.
Rebolledo said she speaks with her son by phone every two weeks, and she said he believed authorities would bring detainees over and hand them over at the international bridge itself. But at the crossing between Norte de Santander in Colombia and Táchira state in Venezuela, there was no such handover or unusual activity after the cancellation of the first in-person meeting between Petro and Rodríguez.
Late Thursday, Colombia and Venezuela issued a joint statement assuring that a meeting would take place at a future date without providing further details, according to the report. For families waiting on releases, that gap between assurances and action left Friday’s border encounter marked more by absence than by any transfer of prisoners.