Posted on 01/05/26
| News Source: FOX45
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is set to make his first U.S. court appearance on Monday in New York after he was captured by troops on Saturday and charged with narco-terrorism.
Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores, is expected to appear at noon for a brief but required legal proceeding. They have been jailed in Brooklyn after the U.S. military seized them from their Caracas home in a surprise raid.
As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime — including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers.
Maduro’s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.
The case against Maduro has been assigned to 92-year-old federal judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. He is the same judge who denied Trump's request to move his criminal hush money case to federal court and was nominated and confirmed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The Justice Department unsealed a new indictment against Maduro on Saturday, charging him with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the couple will "soon face the full wrath of American justice."
According to the 25-page indictment, Maduro and his wife, along with at least three other defendants, "partnered with narcotics traffickers and narco-terrorist groups, who dispatched processed cocaine from Venezuela to the United States via transshipment points in the Caribbean and Central America, such as Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico."
A bulletin from the State Department states Maduro helped manage and "ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns," a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials.
U.S. authorities allege that Maduro partnered with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” to bring tons of cocaine into the U.S., according to the indictment.
Around 2020, the documents noted, the State Department estimated that between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela annually.
The indictment also accused Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included a local drug boss' killing in Caracas, the indictment said.
Additionally, Flores was accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, resulting in additional monthly bribes.
Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela's new interim president, called for Maduro's “immediate release,” and the capture as "an atrocity that violates international law.”
"We call on the peoples of the great homeland to remain united, because what was done to Venezuela can be done to anyone," she commented after the US military operation. “That brutal use of force to bend the will of the people can be carried out against any country.”
However, she later shifted her tone and requested an "agenda of cooperation" with the U.S. and said Venezuela will "prioritize" moving forward with "balanced and respectful international relations."