Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner gives her medal to Donald Trump

Ms Machado later told reporters: "I presented the President of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize."

She said the gesture was "a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom".

It remains unclear whether Mr Trump accepted the medal.

Speculation swirled last week over whether Ms Machado would hand the prize to the President after she said she would be willing to share it with him.

The comments prompted a swift response from the Nobel Committee, which clarified that the prize cannot be transferred from a winner to another person.

It said: "A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others.

"Once the announcement has been made, the decision stands for all time."

Ms Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amidst growing darkness” in opposition to Nicolas Maduro’s regime, the Norway-based committee said at the time.

Mr Trump has previously criticised the decision, saying last week he could not think of “anybody in history that should get the Nobel Peace Prize more than me”.

The Venezuelan’s move to hand the President the medal comes after Mr Trump said it would be “very tough” for Ms Machado to play a role in her country’s future government.

Mr Trump claimed she did not have the "support or the respect within the country" to play a leading role.

Ms Machado had been living in hiding in Venezuela since Mr Maduro’s re-election - widely described as “rigged” - before travelling to Oslo last month to collect her prize.

She had been set to stand as the candidate for the Vente Venezuela opposition movement, securing a resounding victory in its primary and drawing increasingly large crowds at campaign rallies ahead of the general election.

She was later forced into hiding amid an intensifying crackdown by Mr Maduro’s regime, which has targeted opposition figures with arrests and alleged human rights abuses.

Edmundo González replaced her as the opposition’s candidate, but Mr Maduro claimed a third six-year term after declaring he had won 51 per cent of the vote.

Opposition activists later secured voting tallies from around 80 per cent of Venezuela’s 30,000 polling stations, which they said showed Mr González winning by more than two to one.

The country’s election authority and Supreme Court - both firmly in the grip of regime loyalists - rejected the documents, labelling them as fake.

After US forces captured the far-left dictator on January 3, Ms Machado described it as “the day justice defeated tyranny” and said it was “not only huge for the Venezuelan people and our future, I think it's a huge step for humanity, for freedom, and human dignity".

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