Venezuelan dissident escapes house arrest and flees to Madrid
Sunday, November 19, 2017 @ 8:21 PM
MAYOR of Caracas and opponent of Venezuela's régime Antonio Ledezma has fled to Spain and met with the latter's president Mariano Rajoy following more than two years of house arrest in the South American country.
“We need to rescue democracy in Venezuela as soon as possible, we cannot let Venezuela slip away from us,” Ledezma said when he arrived at Madrid's Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport today (Saturday).
“I haven't fled my country. Political prisoners and prisoners of conscience release themselves.”
Ledezma, who has been under house arrest since 2015 for being a dissenter of Nicolás Maduro's government, said his country is 'on the point of permanent collapse'.
Maduro, upon hearing Ledezma had left for Spain, called him a 'vampire' and said Spain was 'welcome to him'.
But he has warned that for the dissident to meet with president Rajoy would be an 'unfriendly act' on Spain's part towards Venezuela.
Concerning talks due to be held on December 1 and 2 in the Dominican Republic between Venezuela's government and opposition, in which former socialist president of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is expected to act is arbiter, Ledezma said that if Zapatero had 'let his voice be heard' so that the Venezuelans could have 'carried out a referendum revoking' the new autocratic régime voted on earlier this year, the country 'would have saved between 100 and 200 deaths'.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com