Deposed Maduro pleads not guilty after capture in shock US attack on Venezuela | US news
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to drug, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two days after he was captured by US special forces ordered by Donald Trump in an operation that sent shockwaves around the world.
The brevity and formality of the hearing in federal court in Manhattan—only 30 minutes, during which Maduro was asked to confirm his name and understood the four charges against him—belied the far-reaching consequences of U.S. action.
While Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was speaking in court in lower Manhattan, the UN security council held an emergency meeting just a few miles north; where a dozen countries condemned the US “crime of aggression” and secretary-general António Guterres claimed the operation was a violation of international law.
Maduro, 63, insisted to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein that he was “still the president of my country” and that he was illegally “captured” at his home in Caracas and was a “prisoner of war.”
“I’m innocent. I’m not guilty. I’m a decent man,” Maduro said in Spanish during repeated attempts to speak about the judge.
When he entered the courtroom, shackled at his ankles but not his wrists, he looked toward the jury box. Before sitting down, Maduro shouted “Happy New Year!” into the public gallery. he said. English.
Maduro wore orange slippers, a blue shirt over a neon orange shirt, and beige pants. He wrote notes in his notebook throughout the hearing.
He faces four federal charges in the US, including “narco-terrorism” conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
He was first charged in 2020, along with 14 people from his inner circle, as part of the expanding drug trafficking case against Venezuelan authorities and Colombian guerrillas.
Defense attorney Barry Pollack did not immediately apply for bail but said he would later file a petition alluding to the “military evasion” he said his client was subjected to.
Venezuela’s First Lady Flores was also captured in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, killing at least 40 people, including civilians as well as Venezuelan and Cuban security personnel.
His lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said he “suffered serious injuries during his abduction” and required a medical examination due to “serious bruising” to his ribs.
Flores, who had large Band-Aids on his temple and forehead, said he was “completely innocent” when he confessed to the crime.
The pair had previously been brought to court under tight security from the infamous Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn; The previous resident of this center was Jeffrey Epstein’s partner. Ghislaine MaxwellMexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and singer Diddy.
The prison once held former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted on drug trafficking charges in 2024 and was pardoned by Trump only last month.
Maduro and Flores were transported to a helicopter for a short flight to Manhattan, then loaded into an armored vehicle, escorted by heavily armed law enforcement personnel, and transported to the courthouse, where rival factions of Maduro’s supporters and opponents were clashing outside.
The surreal spectacle of the 63-year-old president of a sovereign foreign nation, partially shackled in a U.S. courtroom and wearing a blue shirt over neon orange prison scrubs and khaki pants, recalled the 1991 trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. 2006 public hearing Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq.
The criminal allegation, announced Saturday by U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi, echoed Trump’s claims that his unilateral military intervention in Venezuela was necessary to stop the flow of drugs into the United States.
“For decades, Maduro and his collaborators partnered with the world’s most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists and relied on corrupt officials in the region to distribute tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment alleges.
In the months before Saturday’s raid on Venezuela, US military attacks on “narco boats” had resulted in the deaths of at least 110 people, leading some legal experts to question whether the attacks constituted war crimes.
But Trump also justified Maduro’s kidnapping as a way for the United States to seize “stolen” oil from Venezuela and promised that the United States would “rule” Venezuela for the foreseeable future as American energy companies seize control of the country’s rich oil reserves.
In Venezuela, Maduro’s son Nicolás Maduro Guerra, an elected official, told the national assembly that the United States had “kidnapped” his father.
His deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in to replace Maduro on Monday, offered to work with the United States, appearing to back down from his initial defiant response to the attack, just hours after Trump threatened that he could “pay a very big price, probably a bigger price than Maduro” if he did not bow to Maduro’s wishes.
Meanwhile, Trump’s moves have sparked a wave of global disgust, and fears that the bombing in Caracas, which he has threatened to repeat if Venezuela does not cooperate, will lead to action in other countries with which there is a dispute, particularly Colombia, Cuba and Iran. Temple University history professor Alan McPherson told the Guardian that this would mark a return to the US’s past “naked imperialism” in Latin America.
Tensions with Colombia escalated further on Monday when its president, Gustavo Petro, said his country would “take up arms” if Trump follows through on his threat to take military action there.
At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Guterres said in a statement read by a diplomat that he was “deeply concerned about the possible intensification of instability.” [in Venezuela]its potential impact on the region and the precedent it could set for how relations between states are conducted.”
He added: “I am deeply concerned about the lack of respect for the rules of international law.”
