Maduro Enters Not Guilty Plea Regarding Narcotics Charges, Vice President Sworn In After US Capture

Nicolas Maduro entered a not guilty plea to drug-related charges following his arrest by President Donald Trump.

Fallen After President Donald Trump’s shocking abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro stunned world leaders and left Caracas officials reeling, Maduro entered a not guilty plea to narcotics accusations on Monday.

“I’m not guilty.” I am innocent. I am a good dude. Maduro, 63, stated through an interpreter, “I am still president of my country,” before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein interrupted him in Manhattan federal court.

Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, also entered a not guilty plea. March 17 was designated as the next court date.
According to Reuters, dozens of demonstrators, both pro- and anti-Maduro, gathered outside the courthouse prior to the half-hour session.

Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, was sworn in as the country’s interim leader hours later in Caracas. Rodriguez expressed support for Maduro but made no mention of opposing the U.S. action.

She vowed to lead Venezuela through “these terrible times” and remarked, “I come with pain in my heart over the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage.”

Maduro is charged of running a cocaine trafficking network that collaborated with violent organizations including the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela, the FARC rebels in Colombia, and the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels in Mexico.

In addition to narco-terrorism, he is also charged with conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of destructive devices and machine weapons. According to the newspaper, Maduro has long refuted the accusations, claiming they were a front for imperialist plans to exploit Venezuela’s substantial oil riches.

Trump has never concealed his desire to profit from Venezuela’s oil wealth. The possibility of gaining access to those enormous reserves caused U.S. oil majors’ stock to surge on Monday. While U.S. politicians and world leaders struggled with the unprecedented removal of a head of state, Venezuelan authorities issued an emergency order on Monday, directing police to search and apprehend anyone involved in Saturday’s U.S. strike.

Russia, China, and Venezuela’s leftist allies denounced the attack, and the Security Council of the UN discussed its ramifications.

Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations, expressed concerns about Venezuela’s instability and the legitimacy of Trump’s strike, which was the most significant American action in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989. On Saturday, U.S. Special Forces broke through his security perimeter and grabbed him from the door of a secure room after swooping into Caracas via helicopter.

Armed security personnel in tactical gear led Maduro and his wife from a Brooklyn detention facility to a chopper that was headed to the federal court in Manhattan on Monday morning, with Maduro’s hands zip-tied.

At 12:02 p.m., the judge gave a summary of the indictment’s accusations to start the hearing. Maduro, dressed in orange and beige prison clothes and shackled at the ankles, listened through an interpreter on headphones. To verify his identity, Maduro was asked to stand by Hellerstein. In Spanish, he answered.

The couple’s right to notify the Venezuelan consulate of their arrests was explained by the judge.

From the time he joined the National Assembly of Venezuela in 2000 until his term as foreign minister and his election as the late president Hugo Chavez’s successor in 2013, Maduro was allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking, according to the prosecution.

In response to what he described as his client’s “military abduction,” Maduro’s attorney Barry Pollack predicted lengthy and intricate legal proceedings. Maduro was not asking for his release, he claimed, but he may later.

According to Flores’s attorney, Mark Donnelly, she suffered serious injuries, including severe rib bruises, and requested that she be given X-rays and a physical examination.

Maduro was initially charged in 2020 by federal prosecutors in New York as part of an ongoing drug trafficking prosecution against Colombian insurgents and current and former Venezuelan officials. Cilia Flores was one of several co-defendants and other new information added to the indictment, which was made public on Saturday.

Since claiming victory in an election tainted by claims of widespread irregularities in 2018, Maduro has been seen by the United States as an illegitimate ruler.

The legitimacy of the raid has been questioned by international law experts, some of whom have denounced Trump’s actions as a rejection of a rules-based international order.

The 30 million-person South American oil producer is still run by senior officials from Maduro’s 13-year-old regime in Caracas, who alternate between openly resisting and perhaps working with the Trump administration.