Nicolas Maduro, the ousted president of Venezuela, along with his wife, Cilia Flores, arrived at the Stewart Air National Guard Base, located just north of New York City, on Saturday afternoon. This follows their capture during a bold U.S. military operation in Caracas. The couple was apprehended overnight at their residence in Caracas and subsequently transported to the USS Iwo Jima warship before being flown to New York to face serious criminal charges.
According to two sources familiar with the situation, Maduro and Flores may be arraigned as early as Monday. The couple is expected to be taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal facility located in Brooklyn. The MDC is recognized as one of the few detention centers in the United States equipped to handle high-security defendants. It has previously housed a number of high-profile inmates, including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Luigi Mangione, Sean Diddy Combs, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The U.S. government has filed a superseding indictment in the Southern District of New York against Maduro, members of his family, and his cabinet. The indictment accuses the South American leader of conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and to import cocaine, alongside charges of possession and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated, “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
The charges against Maduro appear to mirror those outlined in a previous indictment from 2020. The indictment, prepared by New York U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, highlights that for over 25 years, Venezuelan leaders have abused their public trust and corrupted legitimate institutions to import substantial quantities of cocaine into the United States. It alleges that Maduro is at the forefront of this corruption, utilizing his illegally obtained authority and the compromised institutions to transport thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S.
The indictment further implicates Cilia Flores in her husband's alleged criminal activities. It claims that she brokered a meeting between a significant drug trafficker and the director of Venezuela's National Anti-Drug Office, Nestor Reverol Torres. Allegedly, she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as far back as 2007. Prosecutors allege that the trafficker arranged a bribe of $100,000 per flight to Reverol Torres to facilitate cocaine shipments. Notably, Reverol Torres was indicted in 2015 by U.S. prosecutors in New York.
In the earlier indictment against Maduro, federal prosecutors detailed a collaboration between the Venezuelan leader and senior officials of the Venezuelan government with the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) to traffic cocaine and weapons into the United States. Maduro has consistently denied these accusations, asserting his innocence in relation to the numerous charges laid against him.