CARACAS/BOGOTA (Reuters) -Venezuela has detained three Americans and two others for alleged terrorist activities, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on Thursday, marking an increase in the count of foreign prisoners in the South American country.
The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has regularly accused members of the opposition and foreign detainees of conspiring with U.S. entities like the Central Intelligence Agency to plan terrorist attacks.
Venezuela released dozens of prisoners, including 10 Americans, in December 2023 following months of negotiations between Caracas and Washington. In exchange, the United States released Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman and close ally of Maduro.
The new list of detainees announced on Thursday, which also included one Bolivian and one Peruvian, brings the number of foreign detainees in Venezuela to at least 12.
"The detained foreigners speak Spanish perfectly, a necessary requirement for them to involve themselves in communities," Cabello said on state television on Thursday.
Last month authorities said they had arrested four other Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen, and the U.S. State Department said "a U.S. military member" was among those detained.
Cabello did not say when the five new detainees were arrested, but did say one of the Americans, Jonathan Pagan Gonzalez, had been captured in the border state of Zulia.
Cabello named the two other Americans as David Guttenberg Guillaume and Gregory David Werber, and he also showed their photos.
Cabello provided no other information about the detainees or what led to their arrest.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A man named Gregory David Werber was convicted three years ago on U.S. federal money laundering charges, after laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug proceeds for a Mexican drug cartel using bitcoin, according to a 2021 press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington.
It was not immediately clear whether it was the same man detained in Venezuela, but a search on the Bureau of Prisons website showed the convicted Werber was released from prison in November 2022.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago, Vivian Sequera and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Leslie Adler)
