New York: Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who was seized by US Delta Force commandos, has arrived in New York to face trial in a federal court on narco-terrorism charges.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who landed at the Stewart Air National Guard Base on Saturday, were taken by helicopter to a heliport in downtown Manhattan near federal offices and courts.
Amid high security, they were driven away in a motorcade. Their first stop was expected to be the Drug Enforcement Agency office for processing.
They are to be detained in Brooklyn’s notorious federal jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, to await trial in a court.
Maduro, who had a $50 million bounty for his capture, is expected to appear in court on Monday for an initial hearing.
After the plane landed on Saturday afternoon, FBI agents surrounded the aircraft and whisked the couple away.
In Operation Absolute Resolve, Maduro was taken early Saturday morning from the Venezuelan military base, Fuerte Tiuna, where he was sheltering, to the Iwo Jima, one of the Navy ships in the armada surrounding Venezuela.
More than 150 aircraft are involved in the operation, officials said.
In charges announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, they are accused of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, and possession of weapons.
An outstanding indictment issued in 2020 charged them also with heading the drug organisatioan Cartel de los Soles.
President Donald Trump left open the possibility of the trial being transferred to Miami, which has the largest population of Venezuelan exiles in the US, and the news of his capture was met with jubilation.
“A decision will be made, I assume, between New York and Miami or [elsewhere] Florida”, Trump said.
Trump has framed the capture of Maduro as an anti-drug operation to create the impression of a commonplace law and order operation to skirt international law provisions against violating the sovereignty of nations.
For now, he has left Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as his successor, in place.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again”, Trump said.
Rodriguez, however, in a fierce rebuttal, accused the US of aggression and said, “This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral, and natural resources”.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro”, she declared.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said about Rodriguez and the interim administration, “We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come”.
But clouding the scenario, Trump has also said, “We are going to run the country right”, and that “It’s going to make a lot of money”.
That was a likely reference to Venezuela’s oil riches.
He had accused Caracas of “stealing” US riches because of its nationalisation of the investments by American petroleum companies.
He has also said that there would be no troops on the ground in Venezuela, without explaining how the US would “run” the country.
María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has also staked a claim to the presidency for Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran against Maduro in the 2024 election, which the US and many international observers said was rigged.
Gonzales ran as the opposition candidate after Maduro barred Machado from contesting the election.
Although Trump has backed the claim of a rigged election and Gonzales being the real winner, he has been silent about them.
The Justice Department said in the charging document that Maduro, along with his wife, the current and former interior ministers, carried out a drug operation for 25 years and sat “atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity”.
Also included in the chargesheet are the leader of Tren de Aragua, the violent Venezuelan gang that proliferated across the US during former President Joe Biden’s rule, the Colombian terrorist groups FARC and ELN, and Mexican drug cartels Sinaloa and Zeta.
Maduro and his associates are accused of working with those groups in running the alleged drug operation.
(IANS)
