Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who wants the US to attack her country to oust President Nicolas Maduro, has traveled to Norway to receive her Nobel Peace Prize and said that she had help from the US to flee Venezuela.
“Yes, we did get support from the United States’ government,” Machado said at a press conference in Oslo, according to NBC News. “I cannot give details, because these are people that could be harmed.”
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Machado traveled to Venezuela’s coast in disguise and boarded a small wooden fishing skiff to reach Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island about 40 miles off Venezuela’s coast.
The group that helped her leave the country informed the US military about the operation, so the boat wouldn’t be blown up by a US airstrike, as the US has been bombing small boats in the region that it alleges are carrying drugs.
“We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat,” a person involved in the operation told the Journal. The report said that she arrived in Curaçao around 3 pm on Tuesday and was “met by a private contractor who specialized in extractions and was supplied by the Trump administration.”
From Curaçao, Machado boarded a private jet that was provided by a “Miami associate” and stopped in Bangor, Maine, before flying to Norway. During her press conference, Machado was pressed several times about whether she would support a US invasion of Venezuela.
“People talk about invasion in Venezuela, the threat of an invasion in Venezuela. And I answer, Venezuela was has been already invaded,” she said in response. “We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents, we have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime.”
Machado said that Venezuela had become a “criminal hub” of the Americas and that she asked the “international community to cut those forces.”
In a previous interview, Machado was asked if she supported the idea of the US bombing Venezuela and said that she believes US “escalation” is the only way to force Maduro out. She also supports President Trump’s bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the region, which amounts to extrajudicial executions at sea.
