Houston Chronicle by Alexandra Zambrano Forseth and Jessica Zambrano Feb. 23, 2019
Almost 500 days ago, our fathers were among the six Citgo Petroleum executives — five U.S. citizens and one U.S. permanent resident — captured at a business meeting in Caracas by the Venezuelan government. They have been held without trial and denied contact with the U.S. State Department, humanitarian organizations and religious groups. Food, water and vitamins sent by our families are rejected or confiscated by guards. Officials for Citgo, a Houston-based refinery that is the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's national oil company, PDVSA, have not met with our families.
Our fathers, all of whom have deep roots along the Gulf Coast, desperately need the Houston community’s support to be reunited with their families back home.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving 2017, our family members — company vice presidents Alirio Zambrano, José Luis Zambrano, Tomeu Vadell, Jorge Toledo, Gustavo Cardenas and acting president and CEO José Pereira — were summoned at the behest of PDVSA to business meetings in Venezuela. During the last of these, the men were detained, forced into the political theater of anti-U.S. sentiment maintained by Nicolás Madoru , now widely considered, including by the State Department, to be Venezuela’s illegitimate president.
To this day, they remain confined to a basement beneath a military intelligence compound in Caracas, where they have endured horrific treatment for more than 14 months.
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