Maduro and wife held in Brooklyn jail since January raid
NEW YORK — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday with his lawyers, where he is expected to continue objecting to the U.S. military action that removed him from power and brought him to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail since early January, when U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York, the Associated Press reported. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry potential life sentences if a jury convicts them.
President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping.
U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to move thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States by colluding with Venezuelan law enforcement to help drug kingpins.