10/24/2020 1:34 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 10/24/2020 1:49 PM
The leader of the Venezuelan opposition party Popular Will, Leopoldo López, would have left the Spanish Embassy in Caracas this Saturday, where he had been since April 30, 2019, and would have already crossed the border into Colombia, according to opposition sources.
López would have clandestinely crossed the border and would already be on his way to Bogotá, according to sources cited by the Colombian station
Caracol Radio
, although the information was not initially confirmed by the politician's relatives.
"Leopoldo López is already in Colombia", tweeted the Venezuelan journalist Miguel H Otero, president and director of the newspaper
El Nacional
, who fled Venezuela due to threats and legal measures from the government of Nicolás Maduro, and resides in Madrid (Spain ).
Leopoldo Lopez is already in Colombia !!!!!
- Miguel H Otero (@miguelhotero) October 24, 2020
Meanwhile, Juan Guaidó, from the same party as López and whom many consider his disciple, participated this Saturday in an act in the central Miranda state, and did not comment on the alleged departure of the opponent from the country.
López, an economist and former opposition mayor who at the time was considered the most prominent Venezuelan political prisoner, was arrested in 2014 and
sentenced to 14 years in prison,
accused of leading the violent acts in the anti-government marches that took place that year. .
The opponent served his sentence for almost three years in the Ramo Verde military prison and in July 2017 he was transferred to house arrest until his release in April 2019.
The residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, surrounded by members of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, this Saturday.
Photo: EFE
López was released from prison during an attempted rebellion against the Maduro government, driven mainly by a dissident sector of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
Since then, he has been a refugee in the Embassy of Spain, the country where his wife, son and the rest of his family are.
His father, Leopoldo López Gil, is an MEP for the Popular Party.
Emblematic leader
After an opposition march on February 12, 2014, in which a 23-year-old opposition protester and two other people died, Maduro held López responsible for these acts of violence and denounced that they were part of a plot orchestrated by the United States to repeat the anti-government protests that led to the 2002 coup that briefly removed the now-deceased President Hugo Chávez from power.
During the three years that López was held in the Ramo Verde military prison, on the outskirts of Caracas, his wife Lilian Tintori vehemently denounced alleged violations of their rights, which included long periods of isolation, suspension of visits from family members and even of their lawyers.
The main organizations that defend human rights in the world, meanwhile, considered López the most prominent political prisoner in Latin America.
From former US President Barack Obama to his successor Donald Trump, a fierce critic of the Venezuelan government, they came to ask for his release.
Source: EFE, ANSA and AP
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