Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was abducted from Caracas along with First Lady Cilia Flores, is expected to appear in a US court soon.
The United States abducted the couple on Saturday and flew them by helicopter to a US warship – and then to New York in the US, where they will stand a trial on multiple US charges. The indictment was filed in the Southern District of New York under seal before Christmas Day, December 25.
The document, which was unsealed on Saturday, accuses the abducted Venezuelan president of heading a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the US with thousands of tonnes of cocaine.
In the indictment, Maduro is charged alongside his wife, his son, and three others.
The charges are the same as those in an earlier indictment brought against him in a Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first term of US President Donald Trump. The main charges brought against Maduro and his identified associates relate to “narco-terrorism” and conspiracy to import cocaine. The offences carry potential maximum sentences of life imprisonment under US law.
In the indictment, charges are on four counts: “narco-terrorism” conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. The US officials accuse Maduro and others of working hand in hand with the region’s largest drug trafficking groups, including in Colombia and Mexico.
The US’s own data shows that Venezuela is not among the world’s major drug producers.
Trump has recently claimed that Maduro is behind the Tren de Aragua gang that Washington has proscribed as a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO)”.
But US intelligence agencies have said that there is no evidence that Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua. In the indictment, the US law authorities have focused on Venezuela’s decades-long role in the cocaine trade.
“For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States,” the indictment’s introduction reads.
It identifies Maduro as “at the forefront of that corruption,” claiming he aimed to “transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States”.
“[Maduro] allows cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members,” the indictment notes.
Source: Here
