Uruguayan released in Venezuela slept in his building's hallway after finding home taken by his captor

MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Saturday, May 30th 2026 - 07:51 UTC

Originally from Uruguay, Breijo arrived in Venezuela in 1979 to work as a cook

Uruguayan-Venezuelan citizen José Breijo, 70, on Wednesday recovered the apartment that had been confiscated during his imprisonment in Caracas, after spending several days sleeping in the building's hallway because one of the police officers who had arrested him in 2023 was occupying his home. The case, documented by the AFP news agency, illustrates the pattern of home confiscations denounced by Venezuelan political prisoners and exiled opposition figures during recent years.

Breijo was released last week under the amnesty law promoted by acting President Delcy Rodríguez, approved in February 2026 under pressure from Washington following the capture of former president Nicolás Maduro on 3 January in a US military operation. Upon returning to his apartment, where he had lived for more than two decades, he found that the property had been assigned three months earlier to one of the officers who had detained him. “If I leave, they put me in jail,” Breijo told the agency, describing how security forces tried to evict him from the hallway where he had set up a mattress. Several neighbors in the building, led by neighborhood leader Eulise Villarroel, denounced the situation before the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Ombudsman's Office. The transfer of the apartment was completed in the early hours of Wednesday, with the police officer's departure.