{"id":354420,"date":"2026-01-06T02:44:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T02:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/354420\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T02:44:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T02:44:06","slug":"deposed-maduro-pleads-not-guilty-after-capture-in-shock-us-attack-on-venezuela-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/354420\/","title":{"rendered":"Deposed Maduro pleads not guilty after capture in shock US attack on Venezuela | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> pleaded not guilty to drugs, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two days after his capture by US special forces in an operation ordered by Donald Trump that sent shockwaves around the world.<\/p>\n

The brevity and formality of the arraignment hearing in federal court in Manhattan \u2013 barely 30 minutes during which Maduro was asked to confirm his name and that he understood the four charges against him<\/a> \u2013 belied the far-reaching consequences of the US action.<\/p>\n

As Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores addressed the court in lower Manhattan, the UN security council held an emergency meeting just a few miles to the north, where a dozen countries condemned the US \u201ccrime of aggression\u201d<\/a> and secretary general Ant\u00f3nio Guterres suggested the operation constituted a breach of international law.<\/p>\n

Maduro, 63, insisted to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein that he was \u201cstill president of my country\u201d, had been illegally \u201ccaptured\u201d at his Caracas home, and was \u201ca prisoner of war\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man,\u201d Maduro said in Spanish during repeated attempts to speak over the judge.<\/p>\n

As he entered the courtroom, shackled at the ankles though not at the wrists, he looked toward the jury box. Before sitting down, Maduro told the public gallery \u201cHappy new year!\u201d in English.<\/p>\n

Maduro was dressed in orange slippers, a blue shirt on top of a neon orange shirt, and beige pants. He scribbled notes on a legal pad throughout the hearing.<\/p>\n

He faces four US federal criminal counts, including \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.<\/p>\n

He was first indicted in 2020<\/a>, along with 14 members of his inner circle, as part of a sprawling drug-trafficking case against Venezuelan officials and Colombian guerrillas.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyer Barry Pollack made no immediate application for bail, but said he would later file a motion alluding to the \u201cmilitary abduction\u201d he said his client was subjected to.<\/p>\n

Flores, the Venezuelan first lady was also captured in the pre-dawn raid on Saturday in which at least 40 people were killed, including civilians and Venezuelan and Cuban security personnel.<\/p>\n

Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she sustained \u201csignificant injuries during her abduction\u201d and required medical examination for \u201csevere bruising\u201d on her ribs.<\/p>\n

Flores, who had large Band-Aids on her temple and forehead, said, when she entered her own not guilty plea, she was \u201ccompletely innocent\u201d.<\/p>\n

The pair were earlier brought to the court under tight security from the notorious Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn, whose previous residents include Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell<\/a>, Mexican drug kingpin Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n, and the singer Diddy.<\/p>\n

The jail also once held the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, who was convicted on drug smuggling charges in 2024 \u2013 only to be pardoned by Trump last month.<\/a><\/p>\n

Maduro and Flores were transferred to a helicopter for a brief flight to Manhattan then escorted <\/a>by heavily armed law-enforcement personnel into an armoured vehicle and transferred to the courthouse, where rival groups of Maduro\u2019s supporters and opponents clashed outside.<\/p>\n

The surreal spectacle of the 63-year-old president of a sovereign foreign nation in a US courtroom, partially shackled and wearing a blue shirt on top of a neon orange prison scrub and khaki trousers, evoked the the 1991 trial of the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and the 2006 public trial<\/a> of Iraq\u2019s leader Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

The criminal indictment<\/a> unveiled Saturday by US attorney general Pam Bondi echoed Trump\u2019s claims that his unilateral military intervention in Venezuela was necessary to stem a flow of drugs into the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaduro and his co-conspirators have, for decades, partnered with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world, and relied on corrupt officials throughout the region, to distribute tons of cocaine to the US,\u201d the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n

Strikes by the US military<\/a> on alleged \u201cnarco boats\u201d in the months before Saturday\u2019s raid in Venezuela have resulted in at least 110 deaths, leading some legal experts to question if the attacks amounted to war crimes.<\/p>\n

But Trump has also justified Maduro\u2019s abduction as a way for the US to seize \u201cstolen\u201d oil from Venezuela, and promised that the US would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela for the foreseeable future while American energy companies take control of the country\u2019s rich oil reserves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Venezuela, Maduro\u2019s son Nicol\u00e1s Maduro Guerra, an elected official, told the national assembly that the US had \u201ckidnapped\u201d his father.<\/p>\n

Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, Maduro\u2019s deputy who was sworn in to succeed him on Monday, appeared to drop her initially defiant response to the attack, offering to work with the US<\/a>, hours after Trump threatened that she could \u201cpay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro\u201d if she did not bend to his wishes.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s moves, meanwhile, sparked a global wave of revulsion, and fears that the bombing in Caracas \u2013 which he has threatened to repeat<\/a> if Venezuela does not cooperate \u2013 could extend to action in other countries with which he is at odds, notably Colombia, Cuba and Iran. That would mark a return to past \u201cnaked imperialism\u201d by the US in Latin America, Alan McPherson, a history professor at Temple University, told the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tensions with Colombia ramped up further on Monday when its president, Gustavo Petro, said his country would \u201ctake up arms<\/a>\u201d if Trump acted on his threat of military action there.<\/p>\n

At Monday\u2019s emergency meeting of the UN security council, Guterres, in a statement read out by a diplomat, said he was \u201cdeeply concerned about the possible intensification of instability [in Venezuela], the potential impact on the region, and the precedent it may set for how relations between and among states are conducted\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI remain deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The deposed Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro pleaded not guilty to drugs, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-354420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}