CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens, who was jailed more than two years ago on accusations he was involved in an drone attack on President Nicolas Maduro, was released from prison on Friday, video posted on social media showed.
Requesens had been held since Aug. 7, 2018 at the Helicoide prison in Caracas, run by the Sebin intelligence agency. The opposition, led by National Assembly speaker Juan Guaido, considered Requesens a political prisoner.
“My brother Juan is home,” his sister Rafaela Requesens wrote on Twitter.
His family and political allies denied the allegations of involvement in the drone attack.
Neither Venezuela’s information ministry nor the chief prosecutor’s office immediately responded to requests for comment.
In the video, posted on Instagram by former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, Requesens is seen on the roof of an apartment building while hugging companions, smiling, and laughing while speaking via video chat on a cell phone.
He was released just months before parliamentary elections scheduled for December, which the opposition has pledged to boycott, based on charges they will be rigged in favor of Maduro’s ruling socialist party.
Maduro, considered a dictator by the opposition and most western democracies, argues the opposition is unwilling to participate because it believes it will lose control of the National Assembly.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Johnny Carvajal in Caracas; Writing by Luc Cohen; editing by Grant McCool)
