Venezuela inmates release 1,200 hostages

A prison director says inmates at a western Venezuelan lockup have released about 1,200 prisoner relatives they’d been holding since Sunday. Prison director Nelson Bracca says the inmates in the city of Uribana released the hostages Wednesday night. He tells the government news agency that the inmates seized the relatives during visiting hours Sunday after trying to negotiate human rights protections with prison authorities. Bracca says an unspecified number of relatives were still waiting to be released Thursday and that 175 had already been let go before Wednesday. Conditions inside the country’s prisons have been in the spotlight since inmates occupied a prison for nearly a month last year after a riot that killed 22 people.