How a Nobel Peace Prize winner escaped Venezuela

Wearing a wig and a disguise, Maria Corina Machado began her escape from Venezuela on Monday afternoon.

- José de Córdoba, Vera Bergengruen & Alex Leary

The Venezuelan opposition leader was trying to get to Norway by Wednesday in time to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that she won for challenging Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro. First she had to get from the Caracas suburb where she has been in hiding for a year to a coastal fishing village, where a skiff awaited her.

Over the course of 10 nerve-racking hours, Machado and two people helping her escape hit 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, before she reached the coast by midnight, said a person close to the operation.

She rested for a few hours, the person said, before the next leg of her journey: a perilous trip across the open Caribbean Sea to Curacao. She and her two companions set out on a typical wooden fishing skiff at 5 a.m., the person said, with strong winds and choppy seas slowing them down.

She had almost completed a escape that had been in the works for about two months and was carried out by a Venezuelan network that has helped other people flee the country, the person close to the operation said. The group said it made an important call to the U.S. military before they set out to sea, warning American forces in the region of the vessel's occupants to avoid the kind of airstrike that has hit more than 20 similar vessels in the past three months, killing more than 80 people.

“We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat,” said the person close to the operation.

The Trump administration was aware of the operation, said people familiar with the matter, but the extent of its involvement was unclear.

The U.S. Navy and the Pentagon declined to comment. Administration officials denied the accuracy of the military contact.