VENEZUELA : FABIÁN BUGLIONE RELEASED AFTER ARBITRARY DETENTION

The International League Against Arbitrary Detention (ILAAD) welcomes the release of Mr. Fabián Buglione Reyes, a Uruguayan citizen who had been unlawfully detained in Venezuela since October 2024.

Mr. Buglione disappeared on 19 October 2024 after passing through a border checkpoint from Colombia into Venezuela. He was taken into custody, held incommunicado, and denied access to his family, legal counsel, and consular assistance. For months, his whereabouts remained undisclosed, raising grave concerns of enforced disappearance.

• In response, ILAAD submitted an urgent request to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, calling on Venezuela to disclose Mr. Buglione’s whereabouts, end his enforced disappearance, and guarantee his rights.

• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay undertook diplomatic efforts to secure his release.

Mr. Buglione was released on 18 July 2025  as part of a multi-party detainee exchange involving Venezuela, the United States, and El Salvador. He is now safe and has reunited with his family.

While celebrating this long-awaited release, ILAAD stresses that arbitrary detention must never be used as a political tool.

In its 2020 Annual report (A/HRC/48/55) and in the light of the adoption of the Declaration against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, on 15 February 2021, in Ottawa, the Working Group recalled its grave concern about the detention of foreign nationals especially in instances where foreign nationals are detained in a country in order to gain leverage in relations with the States of their nationality, and its recommendations for the proper and prompt consular assistance as an essential safeguard against arbitrary detention.

In the case at hand it is respectfully submitted that the Working Group finds as well that Mr. Fabián Buglione Reyes has been deprived of his liberty on discriminatory grounds because of his status as a foreign national to use him as bargaining chips in State-to-State relations in violation of articles 2 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and articles 2 and 26 of the Covenant (Category V).