Veteran Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, under house arrest since 2015 for alleged coup plotting, escaped across the border to Colombia on Friday and later flew to Spain. With a 2018 presidential election looming, an array of major Venezuelan opposition figures are now in exile, detention or are barred from holding office.
They say Maduro has turned Venezuela into a dictatorship, while the government accuses them of joining forces with a US-led global plot to topple him. Ledezma, the best-known detained opponent of leftist President Nicolas Maduro after Leopoldo Lopez, had spearheaded street protests against Maduro in 2014 that led to months of violence and 43 deaths. "In Spain today I feel free," he said at Madrid's Barajas airport, where he arrived in the early hours of Saturday. He was cheered by a small crowd including his wife and two daughters, who were already in Spain. Supporters chanted the Venezuelan anthem.
"Let's not permit that Venezuela dies in our hands," he also said, adding that he would soon meet with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The 62-year-old former Caracas metropolitan mayor said he had gone past 29 police and army controls during a clandestine, overland journey that he kept secret from his loved ones.
"I ask my wife and daughters to understand. They have suffered long hours of anguish without knowing where I was," he told reporters in the Colombian border town of Cucuta after crossing a bridge from San Antonio in Venezuela. "It was my decision alone." "Welcome to freedom!" tweeted former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who is close to Venezuela's opposition and the families of other jailed activists.
Ledezma was mocked by Maduro as "The Vampire," and accused by officials of helping violent hardliners, including dissident military officers plotting to topple the president via air strikes. Ledezma said those charges were trumped up. "I hope they never send him back, they can keep the Vampire," Maduro said on Friday evening. "The people of Madrid will have to be careful at night, the Vampire (is going) to Madrid."
Before boarding a private plane to Bogota, Ledezma said he was planning a "global pilgrimage" to fight for political freedom in Venezuela. He thanked Colombia's government, which also recently gave asylum to another high-profile Venezuelan dissident, former state prosecutor Luisa Ortega. "It's time for him (Maduro) to step aside and allow a transition government," said Ledezma. "Maduro cannot keep torturing the Venezuelan people, he's killing Venezuelans with hunger."
The Opec nation of 30 million people is suffering a fourth year of brutal recession, with the highest inflation in the world, shortages of food and medicines, and many people having to skip meals or suffering preventable illnesses.
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