Venezuela’s opposition leader said she has “no regrets” about symbolically handing her Nobel Peace Prize medal to U.S. president Donald Trump earlier this year.
Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, María Corina Machado said:
There is a leader in the world, a head of state in the world who risked the lives of his country’s citizens for Venezuela’s freedom.
Machado presented her Nobel medal to Trump during a meeting at the White House in January, shortly after U.S. forces were ordered to carry out strikes on Venezuela—and to detain President Nicolás Maduro, currently held in New York facing U.S. drug-related charges.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee later clarified that the award itself “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” after the symbolic handover sparked international attention.
Machado, who spent months in hiding before leaving Venezuela in December to collect her Nobel Prize in Oslo, said she is now coordinating plans for a return to Venezuela with support from Washington. She also told supporters in Madrid that preparations are underway for a possible return home.
Addressing thousands of supporters, she said:
Everything we have done over these long 27 years has been to prepare ourselves for a moment of reunion and of building a nation that will be free forever.
She was referring to consecutive periods of authoritarian governance under Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez.
