The deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores entered not guilty pleas to drug and weapons charges in a New York courthouse on Monday. He told the judge, defiantly, that he had been abducted from Caracas.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Before the judge interrupted him, Maduro said, “I was captured,” in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter. “I am innocent,” he said when asked to enter a plea to the accusations. “I’m not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country,” Maduro added.
The US government’s most significant prosecution of a foreign head of state in decades began with Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Flores, were kidnapped from their Caracas residence on Saturday in a stunning midnight military operation. She entered a not guilty plea as well.
The criminal prosecution is taking place in the larger diplomatic context of a bold regime transition orchestrated by the United States, which President Donald Trump claims will allow his administration to “run” the South American nation.
Maduro, 63, was transported to court early on Monday under heavy security. He was driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle after being flown by helicopter from Brooklyn, where he is incarcerated, to Manhattan. Just before noon, he and Flores were escorted into court. They both put on headsets to listen to the English-language proceedings as they were translated into Spanish while wearing jail-issued clothing and leg shackles.
A man in the audience called Maduro an “illegitimate” president as he exited the courthouse.
Barry Pollack, Maduro’s attorney, said that he anticipates challenging the legitimacy of the latter’s “military abduction.”
Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office,” said Pollack, a well-known Washington attorney who has represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
After being seized by the US in a similar military invasion in 1990, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega made an unsuccessful attempt to use the same immunity claim. However, the US does not acknowledge Maduro as the rightful leader of Venezuela, especially following a hotly contested reelection in 2024.
Flores has bandages on her forehead and right temple and introduced herself to the judge as the “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela.” According to her attorney, Mark Donnelly, she had “significant injuries” while being captured.
Maduro and others are charged in a 25-page indictment with collaborating with drug traffickers to help smuggle thousands of tons of cocaine into the US. If found guilty, they might spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
The indictment accuses Maduro and his wife, among other things, with ordering the kidnappings, beatings, and killings of people who owed them money for drugs or threatened their drug trafficking business. According to the indictment, this included the murder of a local drug leader in Caracas.
Meanwhile, Trump reiterated his assertion that he is in control of Venezuela, while Maduro ally Delcy Rodríguez took the oath of office as acting president.
Additionally, Trump warned other nations that the US “needs Greenland,” and warned Mexico to “act together” on drugs and threatened to use military force in Colombia.