Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has demanded El Salvador release hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported from the United States, who he described as being “kidnapped,” after his Salvadoran counterpart earlier proposed a prisoner swap.

Speaking on a television broadcast on Monday, Maduro demanded that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele “provide proof of life for all the kidnapped young people,” allow their families and lawyers to visit the mega-prison where they’re being kept, and to release them “unconditionally.”

El Salvador's president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in his country - if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners.

Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media.

He said many of the Venezuelan deportees had committed "rape and murder", while Venezuelan political prisoners were jailed only because they opposed Maduro, whose re-election last year is widely disputed.

The self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, is offering Venezuela’s president a prisoner swap — 252 detainees, including many deported to El Salvador from America, in exchange for 252 of Nicolás Maduro’s political prisoners. 

‘The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,’ Nayib Bukele wrote in a taunting post to Nicolás Maduro about detainees in Venezuela.