The most dangerous moments came when salvation seemed finally assured.
Many miles from land, the small fishing skiff carrying the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel prize laureate María Corina Machado had been lost at sea for hours, tossed by strong winds and 10ft waves. A further hazard was the ever present risk of an inadvertent airstrike by US warplanes hunting alleged cocaine smugglers.
After three hours drifting in the darkness, the flimsy boat finally made contact with a larger vessel sent to take Machado to Curaçao, a former Dutch colony that remains part of the kingdom of the Netherlands. From there, the 58-year-old politician would travel by private jet, via the US, to Oslo, where the Nobel prize was due to be awarded to her within hours. The relief was intense.
“There was a moment when I felt like there was real risk to my life,” Machado told the Guardian in Oslo on Friday. “But it was a very spiritual moment because in the end I felt like I was in God’s hands and it would be in his hands. He decided for me to be here and able to hug my family and other families of political prisoners.”
The clandestine 5,500-mile (8,850km) journey from Venezuela to Norway was organised by Bryan Stern, a US special forces veteran who heads the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, a Florida-based NGO specialising in the “rescue [of] Americans and allies from conflict and disaster zones”, according to its website.
Stern described on Wednesday the challenges of organising the escape of Machado. “She has a very large target on her back,” Stern told CBS News. “This is not a random shopkeeper who doesn’t want to be in Venezuela any more. This is moving around a rock star.”
Since Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013, Venezuela has been in economic mayhem, subjected to hyperinflation, hunger and increasingly authoritarian rule. Last year, Maduro was accused of stealing the presidential election and launched a wave of repression, forcing Machado into hiding. Independently verified data shows the poll was won by Machado’s ally Edmundo González.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Machado wore a wig and a disguise to flee a safehouse in a suburb of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. She then crossed 10 roadblocks before arriving in a remote fishing port where helpers had prepared a small fishing skiff.
The battered boat had been chosen primarily because it was so different in appearance from the powerful and fast vessels favoured by cocaine smugglers.
But still, the fear lurked that US forces could mistake the high-seas rendezvous for a contraband handover and inadvertently launch an airstrike on the conservative leader who dedicated her Nobel win to Donald Trump.
Since August, the US president has ramped up pressure on Maduro, putting a $50m bounty on his head and ordering a massive military buildup in the Caribbean – as well as a series of deadly airstrikes on alleged narco vessels, killing more than 80 people. On Wednesday, the US seized a “dark fleet” oil tanker near Venezuela, which Caracas denounced as “blatant theft”.
In order to reduce the risk of an airstrike, Stern told US defence officials some of his planned route. But many perils remained.
He said: “It was dangerous. It was scary. The sea conditions were ideal for us, but certainly not water that you would want to be on … The higher the waves, the harder it is for radar to see. That’s how it works.”
A technical fault delayed the skiff, while its primary GPS system was swept away by waves and a backup navigation device failed, the WSJ reported. “The seas are very rough. It’s pitch black. We’re using flashlights to communicate. This is very scary, lots of things can go wrong,” Stern told the BBC.
Amid growing fears they could miss the rendezvous, the two boats finally met and the politician reached Curaçao by mid-afternoon on Tuesday.
On Wednesday mornin,g a private jet carrying Machado departed for Norway, via a stop on the US east coast.
She arrived in Oslo too late for the Wednesday evening prize-giving ceremony but appeared on a balcony of the Grand Hotel in the Norwegian capital early on Thursday, waving and blowing kisses to cheering supporters chanting “freedom”. The last time she had appeared in public was in Caracas in January, when she protested over Maduro’s inauguration for his third term.
The Nobel peace prize was awarded to Machado for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
Stern said the operation to get her to Oslo was financed by “a few generous donors” and that the US government “did not contribute a single penny”. The decision to leave Venezuela and join the Nobel events in Oslo would have come at both personal and political risk to Machado, say analysts.
Benedicte Bull, a professor specialising in Latin America at the University of Oslo, said: “She risks being arrested if she returns even if the authorities have shown more restraint with her than with many others, because arresting her would have a very strong symbolic value.”
In her acceptance speech on Wednesday, read by one of her daughters, Machado denounced kidnappings and torture under Maduro, calling them crimes against humanity and “state terrorism, deployed to bury the will of the people”.
She added: “Of course, the risk of going back, perhaps it’s higher, but it’s always worthwhile. And I’ll be back in Venezuela, I have no doubt.”
