Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, congresswoman Cilia Flores, will be presented this Monday (5) to a federal court in New York. The hearing will be the first in the United States after the couple’s capture and transfer to the country, according to judicial sources consulted by the EFE agency.
According to a spokesperson for the Southern District Court of New York, both will be brought before federal judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Manhattan at 12 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Brasília time).
Maduro and Flores have been detained since Saturday night (3) at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, a high-security federal prison in New York City.
Located in the borough of Brooklyn, MDC has been called “hell on Earth.” It is one of the city’s most notorious prisons, along with Rikers Island, and has been criticized for understaffing, crime within its facilities and harsh cell living conditions.
Its approximately 1,200 inmates have been awaiting trial in federal courts since the closure of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.
The hearing comes after the United States government announced, on Saturday, the capture of Maduro in Caracas, in an operation that included air strikes against targets in Venezuelan territory.
In the United States, Maduro faces four federal charges: conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, as well as conspiracy to possess these weapons in support of criminal activities. The accusations also point to collaboration with organizations classified as terrorist by Washington.
The accusations were formalized in 2020 by the Attorney General’s Office for the Southern District of New York and reaffirmed on Saturday. According to the documents, Maduro had led a structure for years that used drug trafficking as an instrument of attack against the United States.
Cilia Flores, in turn, is accused of involvement in logistical and financial support operations for the same criminal organization, according to court documents cited by the American press.
First hearing with Maduro and his wife will serve as a formal reading of the accusations
In cases of this type, the first hearing usually serves to formally read the charges, confirm the identity of the defendants and define initial measures, such as preventive detention and legal representation.
The expectation is that both will remain in prison without the right to bail while the process progresses, according to information published this Sunday by the The New York Times and through the network CBS.
The Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, released this Sunday, on the X network, a joint note with the United States Department of Justice, the FBI and the Drug Control Administration, stating that the operation that resulted in the capture of the couple took months of planning.
According to the statement, the objective was to ensure the safe transfer of the accused to the United States so that they could face federal charges. The text states that all steps were carried out “in strict accordance with American law” and that the action supports an ongoing criminal investigation into drug trafficking and related crimes, considered by Washington to be factors in worsening violence and the drug crisis in the region.
The attorney general added that “all legal options were considered for a peaceful solution” and attributed the outcome to the continuity of the criminal conduct attributed to the accused.
Maduro arrived in New York on Saturday night aboard a military aircraft, was initially taken to a federal building linked to the DEA and then transferred to the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, which houses defendants involved in highly complex criminal cases.
