Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, face new charges of alleged torture and other crimes from US prosecutors in New York, announced October 8.
The couple has been held in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) since early January, when US military forces kidnapped them from their residence in Caracas.
Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the new charges. They maintained their innocence on the original charges of narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, and weapons offenses, with Maduro saying he “looks forward to his day in court.” If convicted, they face a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison or potential life sentences.
Prosecutors first indicted Maduro and 14 others in March 2020, during Trump’s first term in office. The trial is set to begin June 1, 2027.
The new charges attempt to portray Venezuela’s leadership as criminal to justify US imperialism’s increasing domination over the country and its oil reserves—the largest in the world—as part of its effort to deepen control of Latin America.
The 30-page indictment accuses the couple of using Venezuela’s military, intelligence agencies, and security forces to torture opponents and suppress dissent. Prosecutors allege Maduro ordered and monitored the torture of political opponents, proposed harsher abuses, and urged the abduction and torture of military officers suspected of disloyalty, a plan Flores allegedly endorsed. One of the torture accounts reportedly comes from a US mercenary accused of conspiring to assassinate Maduro.
Washington has repeatedly accused Venezuelan officials of human rights abuses despite its own extensively documented record—including routine brutalization of protestors by militarized police forces; torture at Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black sites such as Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; and the barbaric conditions in immigration detention facilities like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” that many Venezuelan migrants have been subjected to.
Flores was denied release for medical treatment after the new charges were filed. According to her lawyers, she has lost 25 pounds, has untreated medical issues, suffered from a heart attack in July, and was scarred when she was “thrown against a wall or dresser” during the US raid. Prosecutors opposed bail, claiming she would pose an “extreme risk of flight and danger to the public.”
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has dropped the government’s attempts to secure immunity for Maduro and Flores, and has increasingly colluded with US imperialism.
Image: Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, 2013. Credit: Ricardo Patiño, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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