Venezuelan union leader Carlos Ortega has escaped from a military prison where he was serving a sentence of nearly 16 years for rebellion, the nation’s attorney general said Sunday.
Ortega, still president of the Confederation of Venezuela Workers, led a two-month general strike launched in 2002 that nearly shuttered the nation’s vital oil industry in a failed effort to oust President Hugo Chavez.
“I spoke with the Defense Minister, Gen. (Raul) Baduel, and he confirmed the information,” said Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez in a telephone interview with state television.
Rodriguez said Ortega appeared to have escaped early Sunday morning along with three military officers. He said the escape could have involved the complicity of authorities at the Ramo Verde military prison located outside the capital of Caracas.
“Effectively at this moment the people who appear to have escaped are not in the Ramo Verde” prison, he said.
Ortega had been jailed in the military prison to ensure his safety, Rodriguez said. A Defense Ministry spokesman declined to comment on the news of Ortega’s escape.
The labor leader was convicted last December of rebellion in connection with his role in the grueling strike, which ended in early 2003.
He had been given political asylum in Costa Rica that year following accusations that Chavez was seeking to kill him.
But he returned to Venezuela, maintaining a low profile and was reportedly working to remove Chavez when he was captured in March 2005 in a Caracas nightclub.
Opposition leaders call his conviction an example of political persecution, and accuse the leftist Chavez of seeking to clamp down on dissidents in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.
Ortega helped lead a total of four national strikes against Chavez between 2001 and 2003, one of which came just before a coup that briefly ousted the firebrand leader in April 2002.
Chavez survived the coup and the strikes, and is now widely expected to be reelected in Dec. 3 polls.