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Lawyers for Maduro are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of foreign state.
NEW YORK — Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is set to make his first appearance in a New York courtroom Monday to face U.S. drug charges.
Maduro was captured Saturday after the U.S. spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs.
He landed in New York late Saturday afternoon along with his wife, Cilia Flores, after being taken from their home in a military base in the capital city of Caracas — an act Maduro’s government called “imperialist.”
The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy and Maduro is due to make his first appearance Monday in Manhattan’s federal court.
Lawyers for Maduro are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of foreign state, which is a bedrock principle of international and U.S. law.
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
It’s not too dissimilar to when Panama’s Manuel Noriega, another Latin American strongman, was removed by American forces 36 years ago.
Trump’s ordering of the operation in Venezuela raises constitutional concerns because it wasn’t authorized by Congress, but now that Maduro is in the U.S., courts will likely bless his prosecution because, like Noriega, the U.S. doesn’t recognize him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
“There’s no claim to sovereign immunity if we don’t recognize him as head of state,” said Dick Gregorie, a retired federal prosecutor who indicted Noriega and later went on to investigate corruption inside Maduro’s government. “Several U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have called his election fraudulent and withheld U.S. recognition. Sadly, for Maduro, it means he’s stuck with it.”
The dramatic seizure of the Maduros capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, demanded that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president. So did the country’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who said Sunday that the country’s armed forces “categorically reject the cowardly kidnapping” and will “maintain internal order and peace.”
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