Lucas Hunter, a Franco-American detainee in Venezuela since January 2025, has been launched, announces Jean-Noël Barot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, in X, this Saturday, July 19.
“I greet the efforts of the United States Department of State to reach its release,” added the minister.
The Liberation of the Francoan is linked to an exchange of Venezuelan migrants arrested in a saving prison. The Trump administration said Friday during the day that Venezuelan migrants had been released in exchange for ten Americans detained in Venezuela and an unknown number of “Venezuelan political prisoners”.
Lucas Hunter, 37, is among these people released. This Franco -American had been arrested in January by the Venezuelan border guards during a vacation in Colombia.
With AFP, his sister, Sophie, had described this “as unfair.” “He did not hurt anything, he is not a political activist, he does not have military affiliation … He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said last March about his brother, whose case is linked to a complex diplomatic node.
The family had no news
According to its history, on January 7, Lucas Hunter had been arrested on the border between Colombia and Venezuela by Venezuelan agents, while traveling only to make Kitesurf.
Lucas Hunter was not aware of approaching the border and, when he noticed, “he turned to leave, but was taken by Venezuelan border agents, who went to Colombia to catch it,” said his family on the website mounted to declare his cause.
The day after his arrest, he had sent a message to say he hoped to be released soon. “And since then, we have no news,” said his sister Sophie, who went to Washington last March.
Lucas Hunter, who works in Finance in London, “was attacked by her American passport,” said his sister Sophie, for whom this arrest was “political.”
Source: BFM TV
