A U.S. sailor who was in Venezuela without authorization or knowledge of his chain of command was detained by authorities there in recent days, defense officials said. The sailor is the second U.S. service member in five months to be taken into custody during unauthorized travel to a less-than-friendly nation.
A U.S. soldier snuck into Russia in April to meet his girlfriend and was arrested. He remains in Russian custody.
U.S. government officials have not publicly identified the sailor, and no information was immediately available about why he went to Venezuela, though a defense official confirmed he did not inform his chain of command he intended to visit the country. The Defense Department strongly advises U.S. service members against traveling to Venezuela, per State Department guidelines.
“We are aware of reports that a U.S. Navy sailor was detained on or about August 30, 2024, by Venezuelan law enforcement authorities while on personal travel to Venezuela,” a defense official told Task & Purpose on Thursday. “The U.S. Navy is looking into this and working closely with the State Department.”
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The U.S. government is trying to get more information from Venezuelan officials about the situation, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.
“We’re obviously in touch as appropriate, as you would be, with Venezuelan authorities to try to get more knowledge,” Kirby said.
News of the sailor’s detention comes days after U.S. government officials announced they had seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for alleged sanctions violations.
The State Department, which withdrew all its diplomatic personnel from the U.S. embassy in the country’s capital, Caracas, in March 2019, has issued an advisory urging American citizens to not travel to Venezuela.
“The Department has determined there is a high risk of wrongful detention of U.S. nationals in Venezuela,” the travel advisory reads. “Security forces have detained U.S. citizens for up to five years. The U.S. government is not generally notified of the detention of U.S. citizens in Venezuela or granted access to U.S. citizen prisoners there.”
In December, the U.S. government secured the release of 10 Americans from Venezuela, including six whom it classified as “wrongfully detained,” as part of a prisoner exchange. As part of the agreement, former defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis — better known by his nickname “Fat Leonard” — was arrested and returned to the United States.
Francis had pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges in connection with a scandal that rocked the Navy, but he fled the United States in 2022 before he could be sentenced.
At least one other service member is being held in another country after going there on unauthorized leave. Army Staff Sgt. Gordon Black was recently sentenced to nearly four years in prison in Russia on charges for allegedly threatening and stealing from his girlfriend.
Black, who is married and in the process of getting a divorce, flew from South Korea to Russia via China to meet a woman even though U.S. service members are prohibited from traveling to Russia. He had just out-processed from Eighth Army at Camp Humphreys, South Korea and had signed out on Permanent Change of Station to leave to travel to Fort Cavazos, Texas.
Black’s mother Melody Jones told Task & Purpose in May that she believes her son’s girlfriend set him up to be arrested by luring him to Russia. She also begged him not to travel to Russia.
When Jones asked her son if he had received official permission to go to Russia, he did not answer, she said.
“I said, ‘You didn’t, did you?’ And he would never tell me if he did or didn’t,” Jones recalled. “And I told him, ‘You didn’t get permission to go to Russia. There’s no way. They’re not going to let you go there. I said, ‘why don’t you meet in Thailand, China, anywhere but there?’”
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