Disguised and in danger: how a Nobel Peace prize winner escaped Venezuela
Opposition leader María Corina Machado slipped through 10 military checkpoints to reach a fishing boat bound for Curaçao and a private jet headed to Norway.
Wearing a wig and a disguise, María Corina Machado began her escape from Venezuela on Monday afternoon (local time).
The Venezuelan opposition leader was trying to get to Norway by Wednesday in time to receive the Nobel Peace prize she won for challenging Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.
First she had to get from the Caracas suburb where she has been in hiding for a year to a coastal fishing village, where a skiff awaited her.
Over the course of 10 nerve-racking hours, Ms Machado and two people helping her escape hit 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, before she reached the coast by midnight, said a person close to the operation.
She rested for a few hours, the person said, before the next leg of her journey: a perilous trip across the open Caribbean Sea to Curaçao. She and her two companions set out on a typical wooden fishing skiff at 5am, the person said, with strong winds and choppy seas slowing them down.
She had almost completed an escape that had been in the works for about two months and was carried out by a Venezuelan network that has helped other people to flee the country, the person close to the operation said.
The group said it made an important call to the US military before setting out to sea, warning American forces in the region of the vessel’s occupants to avoid the kind of airstrike that has hit more than 20 other similar vessels in the past three months, killing more than 80 people.
“We co-ordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat,” the person close to the operation said.
The Trump administration was aware of the operation, said people familiar with the matter, but the extent of its involvement was unclear.
The US Navy and the Pentagon declined to comment. Administration officials denied the accuracy of the military contact.
Around the same time of their crossing, a pair of US Navy F-18s flew into the Gulf of Venezuela and spent roughly 40 minutes flying in tight circles near the route that would lead from the coast to Curaçao, according to flight-tracking data. It was the closest incursion of US aircraft into Venezuelan airspace since the US military build-up began in September.
Ms Machado arrived in Curaçao around 3pm Tuesday. She was met by a private contractor who specialised in extractions and was supplied by the Trump administration, the person said. Exhausted by the long trip, Ms Machado checked into a hotel and stayed overnight, the person said.
As the sun rose in Curaçao, and as guests began to gather in Oslo, an executive jet provided by a Miami associate took off from the island and headed for the Norwegian capital, after making a stop in Bangor, Maine, the person said. Before boarding the aircraft, Ms Machado recorded a short audio message thanking “so many people … (who) risked their lives” so she could leave Venezuela.
She touched down in Oslo on Wednesday evening.
Her escape was such a closely guarded secret operation that the Nobel Institute told Norwegian media it didn’t know where she was as the prize ceremony in Oslo began. Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony Ms Machado had been through “a journey in a situation of extreme danger”.
Her daughter accepted the award on her behalf. “She will be back in Venezuela very soon,” she told the audience, which included US politicians, international supporters and foreign leaders.
Now she is in Oslo, Ms Machado plans to rest for a few days. She has been living in a completely isolated place, and hasn’t been eating well. After about a week, she intends to tour European countries to drum up support for the Venezuelan cause.
Eventually she will also visit Washington, said a person who talks frequently with her.
On Wednesday evening, as her supporters and foreign officials sat down for a five-course dinner served on a special Nobel dining service in the banquet hall of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, details of Ms Machado’s escape circulated among the guests, according to US and Venezuelan attendees.
Ms Machado greeted supporters from the balcony of the Grand Hotel.
Meanwhile in Caracas, Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez accused Ms Machado and the opposition of working to advance US imperialist interests to loot Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral wealth. “The show failed. The lady didn’t show up,” she said. “Those extremist, fascist lackeys who have been asking for blockades, invasions and bombings against Venezuela are going to be defeated again, the same way their cheap show in Norway fell apart.”
Leaving the country carries the risk that Ms Machado could be barred from returning. It could diminish her influence at home, as has happened to several opposition leaders forced into exile in the past. Venezuela’s Attorney-General, Tarek William Saab, has said Ms Machado will be considered a fugitive if she travels to Norway.
Venezuelan opposition activists said that having Ms Machado out of Venezuela will energise their cause, allowing the opposition leader to more effectively lobby foreign governments than she could from a remote video connection, and push for more economic and political pressure on Mr Maduro.
Ms Machado has voiced support of Donald Trump’s military build-up in the region, and argued that a credible threat of force is needed to push the Venezuelan President from power. “Maduro started this war, and President Trump is ending it,” she said in November.
Ms Machado was barred from running for president last year, but she still led a successful campaign, with her candidate winning in a landslide, according to opposition figures and the US.
Mr Maduro declared victory anyway and led a brutal crackdown on protesters. Ms Machado went into hiding, and her successful presidential candidate, Edmundo González, fled Venezuela.
Ms Machado has pledged she will return to Venezuela, where she could face arrest and prosecution. She has taken secret trips out of Venezuela before, the person close to this week’s operation said, using similar secret methods on journeys to Colombia to meet Iván Duque, then the president of Colombia and a political ally.
She also returned to Venezuela on those clandestine trips.
The Wall Street Journal
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