Four­teen of the 22 T&T na­tion­als de­tained in Venezuela since last week have been re­leased.Just af­ter 10 o'clock on Fri­day night, a small group of bedrag­gled women and chil­dren, dressed in Mus­lim garb, left the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and were quick­ly shep­herd­ed in­to a pri­vate ve­hi­cle. The group, eight chil­dren and six women, were re­leased from de­ten­tion in Venezuela. While they are safe­ly back at home, their eight male rel­a­tives re­main in Venezue­lan cus­tody.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, in a text ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian, con­firmed yes­ter­day that ne­go­ti­a­tions are still un­der way to have the men re­leased, but said he was ex­pect­ing them back home by ear­ly next week.The still un­fold­ing and sketchy sit­u­a­tion be­gan last week when the group was de­tained for an al­leged plot to over­throw that coun­try's pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro.Grif­fith has sent a team to me­di­ate the re­lease and said yes­ter­day he was in­formed that the men would be re­leased next week.

Two Venezue­lan na­tion­als wait­ed at the air­port, armed with small plac­ards bear­ing mes­sages of sup­port for the women and chil­dren.They called for more at­ten­tion to the is­sue, say­ing that it was Maduro's regime that was treat­ing them–and now non-Venezue­lan cit­i­zens–bad­ly.The women and chil­dren land­ed at the air­port at 6.45 pm, af­ter an al­most one-hour de­lay. They were kept at lo­cal im­mi­gra­tion for sev­er­al hours, leav­ing the air­port three hours af­ter they land­ed.Grif­fith said he was be­ing in­formed of all on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.