SITREP Pod 2: Free Tomeu Vadell, American held in Venezuela | Pod Hostage Diplomacy

POD HOSTAGE DIPLOMACY

American citizen Tomeu Vadell from Lake Charles, Louisiana has been wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela since November 2017. Tomeu works for US oil company, CITGO and in November 2017, Tomeu was arrested in Caracas while he was down there for a business meeting with 5 of his other colleagues. Collectively, they’re known as the CITGO 6. The US government has stated that they are unlawfully detained.

In October 2019, the Vadell family submitted Tomeu’s case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD). It usually takes 6-12 months for UNWGAD to release their opinion on a case. It has been 2.5 years and to this day, the UNWGAD has not released an opinion on Tomeu Vadell. On this episode, we have the honour of speaking to Tomeu’s daughter, Cristina Vadell who talks to us about this UNWGAD delay and what needs to be done.

Cristina also talks to us about her father’s current condition and how he is coping, the recent release of Gustavo Cardenas who is one of the CITGO 6 as well as the backlash from US opposition party politicians objecting to the Biden administration’s engagement with Venezuela which resulted in the release of two Americans including Gustavo.

We end the episode talking about what the US government, news media and public can do to help bring Tomeu Vadell home to his family in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
If you prefer, you can watch the video version of this interview on YouTube.
For more information on Tomeu Vadell, please check out the following:

• Our previous episodes: Ep 3, Ep 8, Ep 23
• Free Tomeu Vadell website
• Veronica Vadell Weggeman's Twitter account
• Social media hashtag: FreeTomeuVadell

Get the latest updates on hostage cases we at Pod Hostage Diplomacy are working on including new episodes by subscribing to our fortnightly newsletter, the Hostage Briefing. Subscribe here.

You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Support the show

فصول

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Who is Tomeu Vadell? (00:00:48)

3. Summary of what happened to Tomeu Vadell (00:05:24)

4. United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (00:10:17)

5. Backlash after Biden administration engaged Venezuela (00:17:32)

6. Last contact with Tomeu and how he’s coping (00:22:06)

7. What should the US government be doing better? (00:27:11)

8. What can journalists and the news media do? (00:30:00)

9. What can the public do to help? (00:33:40)