A judge from the United States has set this Thursday, October 15, as the date for the reading of charges against the deposed president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, both in custody in U.S. territory after being detained during a U.S. military incursion in Caracas on January 3.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, from the Southern District Court of New York, signed a court order this Wednesday setting the appearance of the two defendants for 11:00 a.m. (local time) in courtroom 26A of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal court in Manhattan.
The hearing takes place a few days after the U.S. Attorney's Office filed charges against the former president and his wife for leading a "repression system" that included arbitrary detentions and torture directed both against the political opposition and against U.S. citizens. According to the indictment from the Southern District of New York, Maduro would have intervened directly in this structure, even proposing specific methods of torture such as sleep deprivation and mocking the testimonies about the abuses suffered by the prisoners.
These new charges add to those already against Maduro since 2020 for narco-terrorism, cocaine trafficking, and weapons-related offenses. The proceedings have been able to advance after the State Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office requested Judge Hellerstein to reject any attempt to claim immunity by the defense, arguing that they do not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela since the 2018 elections and that the crimes attributed to him fall outside of his supposed official functions.
Maduro and Flores remain detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, since their capture last January at the Miraflores Palace. That U.S. military operation, in which more than a hundred people died, resulted in then Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assuming the role of acting president of Venezuela.