10/25/2020 2:11 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 10/25/2020 2:11 PM
The Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López arrived in Madrid this Sunday
after clandestinely leaving his country
where he was a refugee for 18 months at the residence of the Spanish ambassador, and was reunited with his family.
"Yes, I can confirm that he is in Madrid", said about his son to AFP, with emotion in his voice, the father of the opposition, Leopoldo López Gil, MEP for the Popular Party (PP, right).
The Spanish Foreign Ministry confirmed the information in a statement, stating that the emblematic 49-year-old opposition leader
was already able to "reunite with his family"
living in Madrid: his father, his wife Lilian Tintori and their three children.
López Gil Sr. declined to indicate which country his son came from.
But on Saturday he had indicated that after leaving the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, where he took refuge for 18 months, he left Venezuela
"clandestinely"
through the border with Colombia.
AFP
According to a source close to the family, López will offer a press conference in the next few days in Madrid, a city that is home to other Venezuelan opposition leaders who surreptitiously left Venezuela, such
as former Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma.
"Venezuelans,
this decision has not been easy,
but rest assured that you have this server to fight from anywhere," Leopoldo López explained on Twitter López on Saturday night.
Charismatic former mayor of the wealthy Caracas municipality of Chacao, he was sentenced
in 2015 to almost 14 years in prison
, accused of inciting violence in protests against the government of President Nicolás Maduro that left 43 dead and some 3,000 injured between February and May 2014.
In 2017, he received house arrest, after which he was released by his guards and participated in a failed uprising by a group of soldiers against Maduro on April 30, 2019, which was backed by the parliamentary head Juan Guaidó.
After the failure of the uprising,
López took refuge in the house of the Spanish ambassador
in Caracas, where he was as a guest.
And Guaidó?
Madrid condemned that after his departure
"work personnel from his embassy
"
had been detained
and "addresses of personnel assigned to it" had been searched.
"Maduro, you do not control anything. By
circumventing your repressive apparatus, we managed to get our Commissioner for the Center of Government, Leopoldo López, into international territory," Juan Guaidó, recognized as interim president by fifty countries, said on Twitter.
López's exile comes just a few weeks before the parliamentary elections on December 6, promoted by Maduro's allies but boycotted by some thirty parties when they denounced them as a "fraud" that does not offer guarantees of transparency.
In addition, it occurs after Maduro
"pardoned" on September 1
a hundred opponents, several of them collaborators of Guaidó.
"If right-wing extremists say they 'will never leave' and that they 'always do well' ... prepare to see them flee out the back door, stumble and fall," wrote Venezuelan Communication Minister Freddy Ñáñez.
"He swore that he would never leave and fled his Spanish hostel without firing a shot.
Everyone calls him a coward," he
quipped.
Already hit by the fracture in the opposition, the departure of López "further weakens Guaidó internally, because it is
a sign that Guaidó is leaving,
" observes the political consultant of the University of Zulia, Jesús Castillo-Molleda.
Also "you can see how a negotiation with the government, because for Maduro it is better to have Leopoldo outside," Castillo told AFP.
The United States, which ignores Maduro by calling him a "dictator" after being re-elected in May 2018 in elections
considered "fraudulent"
, is leading international pressure with a battery of sanctions that include an oil embargo in force since April 2019.
Under the management of the heir of the late former President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), Venezuela fell into the worst crisis in its recent history, moving into its seventh consecutive year of recession and fourth of hyperinflation.
"We are happy to see Leopoldo López free. The illegitimate regime has hundreds of prisoners because they do not agree with Maduro, they represent a threat because the people are with them, or they have the audacity to ask for the rights of the Constitution," said the virtual embassy (located in Colombia) of the United States for Venezuela on your Twitter account.
According to the NGO Foro Penal, in Venezuela
there are 363 "political prisoners",
including 127 soldiers.
Source: AFP and ANSA
PB
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