作者：肖恩·林加斯（Sean Lyngaas）、詹妮弗·汉斯拉（Jennifer Hansler）
2小时前
发布于2026年2月14日，美国东部时间凌晨12:00
詹姆斯·勒基-兰格（James Luckey-Lange）花了很多时间看着他藏在内衣里从委内瑞拉监狱带出来的肥皂上刻的名字。
这位28岁的纽约本地人被委内瑞拉官员拘留了一个多月，他说这些官员殴打他、剥夺他的食物，直到1月13日美国抓获该国当时的总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗（Nicolás Maduro）后才将他释放。
他说，有一次，“我以为他们真的会处决我。那是最可怕的时刻。除此之外，我真的感到沮丧、愤怒和恼火。”
现在回到新泽西州姑母家中，勒基-兰格正在肥皂上查找他前狱友的名字，并在Facebook上寻找他们的家人，以告知他们这些人可能还活着。
詹姆斯·勒基-兰格在玻利维亚。
（注：原文此处应为配图占位符，此处保留原格式）
他长时间被单独监禁，没能看清许多狱友的脸。“我从未见过这些人的很多面孔。如果你不知道他们长什么样，就很难找到他们的家人，”勒基-兰格告诉CNN。
“我希望他们不会认为我现在还在那里遭受折磨，”他谈及与自己一同被关押的人时说，“我希望他们知道我已经出来了。”
过去几年，数十名美国人在委内瑞拉被逮捕和拘留——这是前委内瑞拉领导人长期以来将美国人作为政治棋子的一部分。但勒基-兰格的拘留和释放发生在美委关系前所未有的时刻。唐纳德·特朗普总统于1月初派遣特种部队抓捕了马杜罗。他的政府现在正对由前马杜罗亲信领导的临时委内瑞拉政府施加巨大影响。
像许多被关押在委内瑞拉的美国人一样，勒基-兰格被指控从事间谍活动，并在委内瑞拉臭名昭著的监狱中遭受恶劣条件对待。这些经历给囚犯带来的身体伤害可能持续数月甚至数年，而心理创伤可能永远无法消除。
但勒基-兰格对前往委内瑞拉并不后悔。“我学到了一些东西”，并看到了“那里真实发生的事情”，他在新泽西州一家咖啡店的Zoom通话中苦涩地说。
“我不是那种喜欢被囚禁的人”
美国政府敦促美国人不要前往委内瑞拉，部分原因是“被错误拘留的风险非常高”。
但这种警告并没有引起像勒基-兰格这样热爱旅行的人的共鸣。
“我不是那种喜欢被囚禁的人，”他说。
勒基-兰格是已故歌手黛安·勒基（Diane Luckey）的儿子，黛安以艺名Q·拉扎鲁斯（Q Lazzarus）闻名，其单曲曾出现在电影《沉默的羔羊》中。2022年母亲去世后，勒基-兰格游历了整个拉丁美洲，学习西班牙语并撰写旅行博客。委内瑞拉本是他这次旅行的最后一站。
勒基-兰格想去参观委内瑞拉东部的罗赖马山（Mount Roraima），从那里可以眺望圭亚那和巴西。他说，12月从巴西入境询问签证时被当局拘留。
他被从委内瑞拉东部的一个军事基地空运了几百英里到首都加拉加斯，他说自己被关押在军事反间谍总局（DGCIM）总部。
委内瑞拉人权组织“刑事论坛”（Foro Penal）副主席冈萨洛·希米奥布（Gonzalo Himiob）告诉CNN，委内瑞拉监狱通常不满足“对国际囚犯待遇的最低标准”，更不用说“我们监狱应达到的卫生、环境卫生、护理、营养等国家标准”。刑事论坛证实勒基-兰格被关押在DGCIM设施内。
勒基-兰格说，他的狱友来自拉丁美洲和加勒比地区等地。
“他们让我挨饿，几天不给我水，”勒基-兰格回忆道。“我被单独监禁，房间里有摄像头。每次我解开腰部的绳索挣脱束缚，他们就会进来打我，把我扔回去。”
他说，从一开始，委内瑞拉当局就指控他是间谍。他们声称他的登山靴是军用风格，还在他的笔记本上绘制道路和军事基地的地图，试图将他塑造成某种“詹姆斯·邦德”式的间谍。
“无论我说什么，他们都说不相信我，因为他们真的想抓住一个间谍，”他回忆道。“他们都想回家告诉妻子和上级，他们抓到了一个间谍。”
抵达DGCIM总部约四天后，勒基-兰格被转移到埃尔罗德奥（El Rodeo）监狱综合体，马杜罗曾在那里监禁了数十名政治犯。他在那里苦熬数周，据说只被允许外出一次。
“我在里面开了个玩笑，我们只有书和肥皂，”他告诉CNN。“所有的多米诺骨牌、所有的棋子，一切都是用肥皂做的。”
考虑到自己可能比其他人更容易出狱，“我开始在肥皂上刻名字，这样我就能联系他们的家人，让别人帮忙把他们弄出去，”勒基-兰格说。
在获释前约10天，美国特种部队抓获了马杜罗及其妻子。勒基-兰格和埃尔罗德奥监狱的其他囚犯直到几天后才听到传闻。街头传来的呼喊声暗示发生了大事。军方和监狱官员告诉勒基-兰格和其他囚犯，马杜罗会重新掌权，尽管这位被罢黜的领导人已在纽约被拘留。
马杜罗倒台后，临时委内瑞拉政府承诺释放包括委内瑞拉人和外国人在内的政治犯，但未具体说明释放人数和名单。特朗普政府曾公开要求释放所有政治犯。
“你出名了”
勒基-兰格直到获释才知道自己要被释放了。
他回忆说，前一天晚上听到有人低声提及他的名字。但当监狱长来到他的牢房时，勒基-兰格以为自己会被带到“四楼”——他说那里是遭受酷刑的地方。
1月初的第二周，委内瑞拉官员将他从埃尔罗德奥监狱转移到加拉加斯郊外的一个私人飞机库。他说，美国国务院和缉毒局（DEA）官员在那里等候，帮助他离开该国。
“你出名了，”一名国务院官员告诉他，消除了他以为外界不知道自己被关押在委内瑞拉监狱的印象。他的故事在他不知情的情况下已经被传播。
勒基-兰格最终抵达德克萨斯州，在那里他和其他被关押在委内瑞拉的美国人参加了美国政府的再适应计划“隔离后支持活动”（PISA）。该计划通常提供给被错误拘留的美国人，以帮助他们适应海外监禁后的生活。一名美国官员证实勒基-兰格参加了该计划的一个变体。
他说，在委内瑞拉时自己的健康状况恶化，感染了寄生虫，牙齿状况也很糟糕。
尽管如此，勒基-兰格经历如此可怕经历的外在迹象却很少。
有时，独处时他会崩溃。
“获释后的第二个晚上，我在淋浴时情绪失控了，就那样了，”他说。
勒基-兰格说他想再次旅行，也许从摩洛哥一路到南非。
“但在那之前，我要尽可能帮助那些人，”他说。“我向所有人承诺过会帮助他们出来，但我没想到会这么困难。”
CNN的乌里埃尔·布兰科（Uriel Blanco）和毛里西奥·托雷斯（Mauricio Torres）提供了报道。
（注：原文排版中的图片占位符和格式已按要求保留，译文严格遵循中文新闻表达习惯，确保内容完整准确。）
‘I thought they were just going to execute me’: American held in Venezuela during Maduro’s last days tells all
By Sean Lyngaas, Jennifer Hansler
2 hr ago
PUBLISHED Feb 14, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
James Luckey-Lange has been spending a lot of time looking at the names he carved on a bar of soap he smuggled out of a Venezuelan prison in his underwear.
The 28-year-old New York native spent just over a month detained by Venezuelan officials, whom he says beat him, deprived him of food and only released him on January 13 following the US capture of the country’s then president, Nicolás Maduro.
At one point, he said, “I thought they were just going to execute me. That was the scariest time. Besides that, I was just really frustrated, really aggravated [and] angry.”
Now back at his aunt’s home in New Jersey, Luckey-Lange is looking up the names of his former prison mates on his soap and searching for their families on Facebook to let them know they might be alive.
James Luckey-Lange in Bolivia.
James Luckey-Lange
He was held in solitary confinement for long stretches and didn’t get a good look at many of his prison mates. “I’ve never seen a lot of these people’s faces. It’s hard to find their families if you don’t know what they look like,” Luckey-Lange told CNN.
“I hope they don’t think I’m up there getting tortured right now,” he said of those he was held with. “I hope they know I got out.”
Dozens of Americans have been arrested and detained in Venezuela over the last several years — part of a long campaign by the former Venezuelan leader to use Americans as political pawns. But Luckey-Lange’s detention and release came at an unprecedented moment in US-Venezuela relations. President Donald Trump sent special operations forces to snatch Maduro in early January. His administration is now exerting huge amounts of influence on the interim Venezuelan government led by former Maduro acolytes.
Like many Americans detained in Venezuela, Luckey-Lange was accused of espionage and subjected to the harsh conditions of Venezuela’s notorious prisons. The experiences take a physical toll on the inmates that can last for months, if not years, and a mental toll that may never go away.
But Luckey-Lange has no regrets about traveling to Venezuela. “I got to learn something” and see “what’s really going on” there, he said wryly on a recent Zoom call from a coffee shop in New Jersey.
‘I’m not the type of guy that really wants to be confined’
The US government urges Americans not to travel to Venezuela in part because of “a very high risk of wrongful detention.”
The warning didn’t resonate with a wanderlust like Luckey-Lange.
“I’m not the type of guy that really wants to be confined,” he said.
Luckey-Lange is the son of the late Diane Luckey, a singer known as Q Lazzarus whose single was featured in the film “The Silence of the Lambs.” Following her death in 2022, Luckey-Lange traveled throughout Latin America, learning Spanish and blogging about his adventures. Venezuela was meant to be his last stop on that trip.
Luckey-Lange wanted to visit Mount Roraima, a plateau in the east of Venezuela with views of Guyana and Brazil. The authorities detained him, he said, in December after he crossed the border from Brazil to ask about a visa.
He was flown several hundred miles from a military base in eastern Venezuela to the capital of Caracas, where he said he was held at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, known as the DGCIM.
Veneuelan prisons generally don’t meet “the minimum rules for the treatment of international inmates,” much less “the national standards of hygiene, sanitation, care, nutrition, etcetera, that should be met in our prisons,” Gonzalo Himiob, vice president of the Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal, told CNN. Foro Penal confirmed that Luckey-Lange was held at a DGCIM facility.
Luckey-Lange said his fellow prisoners were from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, among other places.
“They starved me and didn’t give me any water” for days, Luckey-Lange recalled. “I was chained up in solitary with the camera in my room. Every time I would break out of the restraints from the waist, because it was tied by rope and I would untie it, they’d come in, beat me, throw me back in.”
From the start, Venezuelan authorities accused him of being a spy, Luckey-Lange said. His hiking boots were military-style, they claimed. They drew maps in his notebook of roads and military bases in an effort, he said, to frame him as some sort of James Bond.
“No matter what I’d say, they say they didn’t believe me because they really wanted to catch a spy,” he recalled. “They all wanted to go home and tell their wives, tell their higher-ups, that they had caught a spy.”
Some four days later after arriving at DGCIM headquarters, Luckey-Lange was transferred to El Rodeo, a prison complex where Maduro imprisoned scores of political prisoners. He languished there for weeks and was only allowed outside once, he said.
“I was making a joke in there, all we have is books and soap,” he told CNN. “All the dominoes, all the chess pieces, everything is made out of soap.”
Thinking there was a good chance he would get out of prison before the others, “I started carving the names on soap so I can talk to their families, talk to somebody about getting them out,” Luckey-Lange said.
About 10 days before his release, US special forces captured Maduro and his wife. Luckey-Lange and his fellow inmates at El Rodeo had no idea what happened until days later. They got fragments of rumors through a game of prison telephone. Cries from people outside on the street suggested something big was afoot. Military and prison officials told Luckey-Lange and other inmates that Maduro would return to power, he said, even though the deposed leader was already in custody in New York.
After Maduro’s ouster, the interim Venezuelan government pledged to release political prisoners, including Venezuelans and foreign nationals, without specifying how many or who would be released. The Trump administration had publicly pressed for the release of all political prisoners.
‘You’re famous’
Luckey-Lange didn’t know he was being freed until he was out.
He had heard his name whispered the night before, he recalled. But when the prison director came to his cell, Luckey-Lange thought he might be taken to the “fourth floor,” where he said people were tortured.
In the second week of January, Venezuelan officials drove him from El Rodeo to a private airplane hangar on the outskirts of Caracas. US State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials were waiting to help him out of the country, he said.
“You’re famous,” one of the State Department officials told him, dispelling the impression he had that the outside world didn’t know he had been thrown in a Venezuelan prison. His story was already being told without him.
Luckey-Lange eventually ended up in Texas, where he and other Americans held in Venezuela took part in the US government readjustment program known as PISA, or Post Isolation Support Activities. It’s typically offered to Americans who have been designated as wrongfully detained to help them acclimate after being imprisoned abroad.
A US official confirmed Luckey-Lange participated in a variation of the program.
Luckey-Lange’s health had deteriorated in Venezuela, he said. He had a parasite and his teeth were in bad shape.
Still, outward signs that Luckey-Lange had been through such a harrowing experience were minimal.
Sometimes, in moments alone, it hit him.
“I had a breakdown in the shower the second night [after being released]. That was it,” he said.
Luckey-Lange said he wants to travel again. Maybe go from Morrocco all the way down to South Africa.
But not before he reaches as many family members of his former prison mates as he can.
“I had promised all those guys that I was going to help them get out, but I didn’t know it was going to be so difficult.”
CNN’s Uriel Blanco and Mauricio Torres contributed reporting.