Video Released By Grey Bull Rescue Team Shows How Nobel Laureate Maria Machado Was Rescued From Venezuela (Screengrab) | X/@
Washington DC: A video has surfaced online showing how Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado escaped the Latin American country in December last year. The clip was released by the US-based rescue team, Grey Bull. She was reportedly in hiding for almost a year.
Machado left Venezuela in early December last year so that she could accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. The Venezuelan opposition leader boarded a boat from the Latin American country’s coast and sailed to a point in the Caribbean Sea where Grey Bull founder and special forces veteran Bryan Stern and his team were waiting for the Nobel laureate on another boat, reported CNN.
The video, released on Friday, showed the exact moment Machado reached the point where others were waiting and boarded the second vessel. As the lights from the Venezuelan opposition leader’s boat appeared from a distance, Stern started shouting, “That’s them, that’s them, that’s them.”
After confirming her identity, Stern allowed her to board the second boat. The exact moment of Machado getting onto the second boat amid darkness is seen in the video. “So wet and so cold,” the Venezuelan opposition leader could be heard saying.
In the later part of the video, Machado, wearing a dark jacket and hat, was heard saying, “I am María Corina Machado. I’m alive. I’m safe and very grateful to Grey Bull.”
Describing a harrowing escape by sea from her country, Machado said that she feared for her life during a dangerous journey that brought her to the United States amid mounting pressure from the Nicolas Maduro regime.
“There was a certain moment in the trip, in the boat, where… I was hurt because the waves were very high, over six feet,” Machado told reporters at a Washington news conference held at the Heritage Foundation think-tank.
On Thursday, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to US President Donald Trump during a closed-door meeting at the White House, framing the gesture as a historic symbol of shared struggles for freedom between the two nations.
It remains unclear whether Trump formally accepted the Nobel medal. The Norwegian Nobel Institute has previously stated that once awarded, a Nobel Peace Prize cannot be transferred, shared, or revoked.
For the unversed, the Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated globally for its recognition of efforts to foster peace, offering laureates a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million), funded by the Nobel Foundation.
