Venezuela-hired lawyers file petition in El Salvador aimed at freeing Venezuelans deported by US

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Venezuela-hired lawyers file petition in El Salvador aimed at freeing Venezuelans deported by US

2025-03-25 07:58 Last Updated At：08:00

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government filed a legal action Monday in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison.

Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said they filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.

The maneuver essentially compels the government to prove someone’s detention was justified.

The Salvadoran government has been silent about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners since the U.S. government sent them more than a week ago, despite a U.S. federal judge’s verbal order to turn the planes around.

The Trump administration is using an 18th-century wartime law to justify sending the Venezuelans, who it says were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the administration declared an invading force.

“We represent at this moment 30 Venezuelans who have given us the power to act, but by extension, we are asking for habeas corpus for the rest of the Venezuelan citizens who are detained in our country,” Ortega said.

Salvador Ríos, another lawyer with the firm, said they were contracted by the Venezuelan government and the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela. He said the Venezuelans they represent are not members of the Tren de Aragua and had migrated from their country and “don’t have any criminal record.”

In February, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele offered to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to imprison U.S. deportees or even U.S. citizens serving prison sentences. The U.S. is paying El Salvador to hold them for what both governments say is a cost savings.

But lawyers in both countries have questioned the legal justification for sending migrants who have not been convicted or in many cases even charged with a crime to prison in a foreign country.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

NATO clarifies comments that four missing US soldiers had died during training in Lithuania

2025-03-27 19:14 Last Updated At：19:21

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO on Wednesday clarified comments that Secretary-General Mark Rutte made earlier in the day, when he suggested that four U.S. soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania had died, even though the U.S. Army said their fate was not yet confirmed.

“The search is ongoing,” NATO said in a statement posted on X. "We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”

The U.S. Army said the Hercules armored vehicle the four U.S. soldiers were in during a training exercise had been found submerged in a body of water. It said recovery efforts were underway by U.S. Army and Lithuanian Armed Forces and civilian agencies.

The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting tactical training when they went missing.

Asked Wednesday evening by reporters if he had been briefed about the missing soldiers, President Donald Trump said, “No, I haven’t.”

During a trip to Warsaw, Rutte told reporters that he had received word of the deaths of the four soldiers while he was delivering a lecture, and that his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.

“This is still early news so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones," Rutte said in Warsaw.

Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reported that the four U.S. soldiers and their vehicle were reported missing Tuesday afternoon during an exercise at the General Silvestras Žukauskas training ground in Pabradė, a town located less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Belarus.

The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all NATO members and have often had chilly ties with Russia, a key ally of Belarus, since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.

Relations soured further over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has been one of the most outspoken supporters of Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces.

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