Opposition Leader Leopoldo López Flees Venezuela
BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López, a former political prisoner and prominent leader in the movement to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime, has fled Venezuela, top officials in the opposition said Saturday.
The mentor to U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó and
a conduit to U.S. officials seeking to remove Mr. Maduro from power had been
holed up in the Spanish ambassador’s residence in Caracas since fleeing house
arrest during a failed military uprising in April 2019.
“Venezuelans, this decision has not been a simple one,” Mr.
López said in a Twitter post late Saturday, promising to continue working
against the Maduro regime from afar. “Be assured that this servant can put up
the fight from any place.”
Described as athletic and audacious by those who know him,
Mr. López, who is 49 years old, left the rambling ambassador’s residence, in a
quiet, affluent neighborhood in the eastern end of the city, and made his way
to Aruba, said one person close to Mr. López and familiar with his departure.
The person said Mr. López had traveled to Miami in a journey
that began in Aruba. “It’s an operation that’s been in place for months,” he
said about how Mr. López abandoned the residence. The person said Mr. López’s
final destination would be Spain, a center of opposition activity, where his
family—including his wife, three children and his father, a member of the
European parliament—resides.
Questions, however, remained about his departure, and three
figures in the opposition movement who live abroad said the departure came
after a negotiation between Spain’s socialist government and the Maduro regime.
A person close to the Maduro government said Mr. López was
allowed to escape to facilitate ongoing dialogue with the European Union, which
has tried to broker negotiations between Venezuela’s political divisions.
The ambassador’s residence is tightly guarded, with the
agents from Mr. Maduro’s secret police, the Sebin, regularly questioning
visitors on their way out of the mansion.
Mr. López left the embassy days after the Spanish ambassador
with whom he was close, Jesús Silva, was recalled after more than three years
in Caracas. People close to Mr. López said he was concerned he would no longer
be welcome in the residence. Venezuelan intelligence agents detained two
employees of the ambassador’s residence after Mr. López abandoned the house, a
person with knowledge of what happened said.
In Washington, the Trump administration took notice of the
departure of Mr. López, who has had close ties with Republicans influential in
shaping Venezuela policy, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and officials at
the National Security Council.
“Leopoldo López is a democratic political leader who was
deprived of his freedom for almost seven years by this illegitimate regime,“
said Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokesperson. ”He has now escaped from
Venezuela to continue the struggle for freedom, and we are sure he will
continue to make an important contribution.”
Mr. López’s exit from Venezuela was seen by some in the
opposition as a way to inject energy into an opposition movement that has been
beaten down by Mr. Maduro’s repressive policies, including arrests and torture
of opposition figures, and its own internal squabbling over how to weaken the
regime. At the residence, Mr. López could speak regularly to Mr. Guaidó and
other members of the opposition but not offer public comments or address the
party he led, Popular Will.
In recent months, moderate leaders in the opposition have
called for a shift away from Mr. López’s strategy of direct confrontation with
the regime. Some of them favor working with international brokers such as Josep
Borrell, foreign policy chief of the European Union, to negotiate in the hope
of persuading Mr. Maduro to hold free and fair elections.
Now free, Mr. López is expected to ratchet up lobbying
efforts to make sure that international pressure against Mr. Maduro doesn’t
ease, said Pedro Burelli, a longtime friend and advocate of Mr. López.
“Leopoldo leaving shakes up the tree in every sense,” said
Mr. Burelli. “He is a force of nature. He will be exposed as a free man to the
back and forth of real politics.”
A close aide to Mr. López in Europe, Isadora Zubillaga, said
his departure “is a shot of oxygen for all of us who are fighting abroad and
inside.”
In a post on Twitter, Mr. Guaidó ridiculed Mr. Maduro,
noting that Mr. López’s exit underscored the regime’s diminishing grip on the
country. “Maduro you control nothing,” read Mr. Guaidó’s post.
There was no immediate response from the Maduro
administration. A spokesman for Spain’s embassy in Colombia declined to
comment.
Mr. López’s departure from Venezuela comes in the wake of a
feverish 22-month effort of protests and uprisings—including a failed seaborne
raid in May that Mr. Maduro’s security forces quickly squelched—designed to
topple the regime.
The U.S. has strongly supported Mr. López—his wife, Lilian
Tintori, even met President Trump in the White House in February 2017—and Mr.
Guaidó. That support has increasingly rankled other prominent opposition
figures, as well as foreign diplomats who believe that the mix of protests and
U.S. sanctions against Mr. Maduro has failed and that regime foes need a new
strategy.
Mr. López, who comes from one of Venezuela’s most prominent
families, has long been an unwavering opponent of a regime accused of
widespread rights abuses and election rigging. In January 2019, he had his
greatest success when the U.S. and dozens of other countries declared that they
recognized his protégé, Mr. Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly, as
Venezuela’s legitimate president, and not Mr. Maduro.
But despite U.S. economic sanctions on Venezuela’s oil
industry, Mr. Maduro has clung to power with the help of the country’s allies,
namely Russia, China and Iran.
Once a mayor of an important district of Caracas, Mr. López
became a target of the regime under Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez,
whose government barred him from holding public office. In 2014, he led a
movement he called “The Exit,” which tried to unseat Mr. Maduro through large
protests.
He was arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison on
terrorism and sedition charges after a trial that human-rights organizations
and foreign governments called a sham. His lawyers were prohibited from calling
witnesses in his defense.
Still, Mr. López had played a hands-on role in the
opposition movement, from prison and later from his home, where he had been
under house arrest until April 2019, when he moved to the Spanish ambassador’s
residence. He led strategy meetings with other dissident activists on matters
ranging from regime change to the oil industry through the video chat app Zoom,
according to opposition figures.
Earlier this year, more than a dozen opposition sources,
including several close aides of Mr. López, told The Wall Street Journal that
Mr. López had been involved in the planning of a botched effort in May by a
small group of Venezuelan military defectors and two former American soldiers
to invade Venezuela and trigger an uprising against the Maduro regime.
The plan failed, with the security forces killing a handful
of invaders and arresting the rest. Mr. López denied having any role in the
attempted coup.
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