CARACAS/BOGOTA--Veteran Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, under house arrest since 2015 for alleged coup plotting, escaped across the border to Colombia on Friday.
Ledezma, the best-known detained opponent of leftist President Nicolas Maduro after Leopoldo Lopez, said he had gone past 29 police and army controls during a clandestine, overland journey that he kept secret from his loved ones.
"I ask my wife and daughters to understand. They have suffered long hours of anguish without knowing where I was," he told reporters in the Colombian border town of Cucuta after crossing a bridge from San Antonio in Venezuela. "It was my decision alone."
With a 2018 presidential election looming, an array of major Venezuelan opposition figures are now in exile, detention or barred from holding office. They say Maduro has turned Venezuela into a dictatorship, while the government accuses them of joining forces with a U.S.-led global plot to topple him.
Ledezma, a 62-year-old former Caracas metropolitan mayor, had spearheaded street protests against Maduro in 2014 that led to months of violence and 43 deaths. He was mocked by Maduro as "The Vampire," and accused by officials of helping violent hardliners, including dissident military officers plotting to topple the president via air strikes.
Ledezma denied those charges as being trumped up. "Welcome to freedom!" tweeted former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who is close to Venezuela's opposition and the families of other jailed activists.
"I hope they never send him back, they can keep the Vampire," Maduro said on Friday evening in reference to Ledezma, who is planning to travel to Spain overnight. "The people of Madrid will have to be careful at night, the Vampire (is going) to Madrid."
Before boarding a private plane to Bogota, Ledezma said he was planning a "global pilgrimage" to fight for political freedom in Venezuela. He thanked Colombia's government, which also recently gave asylum to another high-profile Venezuelan dissident, former state prosecutor Luisa Ortega.
