NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors unveiled sweeping new criminal charges against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday, accusing him and his wife of heading a state-sponsored system of repression responsible for beating, asphyxiating, and delivering electric shocks to scores of victims, including several Americans.
The torture charges add to pressure on the ousted authoritarian leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were seized from their Caracas home by the U.S. military in January to face drug trafficking charges in New York.
The updated indictment “alleges conduct that is truly unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said outside the Manhattan courthouse where the case is being handled. “This is the epitome of corruption.”
Maduro denies the charges and “looks forward to his day in court,” lawyer Barry Pollack said. Flores’ attorney said he hadn’t yet had time to review the new allegations.
The indictment claims Maduro suggested torture methods, sought and received updates on specific victims’ treatment, watched a video of a forced confession and personally threatened the killing of one prisoner’s child “as a form of psychological torture.” On occasion, he would laugh after hearing about the abuse of prisoners, prosecutors allege.
Flores, a former attorney general, helped develop the repressive system and ordered the torture of some specific people, the indictment contends.
Maduro, who served as Venezuela’s president from 2013 until his capture in January, has been under investigation for years by the International Criminal Court over allegations of crimes against humanity, tied to his crackdown on opponents. He has always denied any wrongdoing.
He and his wife pleaded not guilty in the U.S. drug case, which accused them of conspiring to flood the U.S. with cocaine. Their attorneys have asked for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that they have immunity as the leader and first lady of a foreign country.
Flores’ lawyers unsuccessfully asked a judge Thursday to release her on house arrest due to medical concerns.
Alleged torture victims included U.S. citizens
The revised indictment covers allegations of torture stretching back to Maduro’s ascent to power in 2013, when he took over as president from his mentor Hugo Chávez, who died of cancer that year.
At the time, Maduro, a former bus driver lacking his predecessor’s military pedigree, was struggling to make inroads with the armed forces — historically the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela — as the oil-dependent economy began spiraling out of control and government opponents took to the streets.
Fearing a barracks revolt, Maduro authorized Venezuela’s feared DGCIM military intelligence agency to use torture against military insiders and opponents he saw as threatening his grip on power, prosecutors allege.
While the indictment doesn’t name the alleged victims, the descriptions of the deaths and imprisonment match those of several high-profile Maduro opponents. They include Leopoldo López, who spent more than three years in prison for leading anti-government protests, and former Chávez Defense Minister Raúl Baduel, who died in custody in 2021. Also described is the shocking death of Fernando Albán, an opposition politician whose fall from the 10th floor of an intelligence agency building was later determined by a U.S. court to be a “murder for hire.”
Three American victims of torture were also described in the indictment.
One, who matches the description of Osman Khan, was detained entering Venezuela in early 2022 and was subjected to electric shocks and forced to eat his own vomit during eight months of imprisonment, the indictment says. Another was beaten badly enough to necessitate a long hospital stay and had a gun stuck in his mouth. A third was handcuffed, hooded and beaten for two days every half an hour, suffering a permanent eye injury, the indictment said.
Khan was released in October 2022 along with former U.S. Marine corporal Matthew Heath and six American oil executives in exchange for two nephews of Flores jailed in the U.S. on narcotics convictions. He and Heath later sued in U.S. courts under a federal anti-terrorism law and, in May, won a $300 million default judgment against Maduro and other top Venezuelan officials for overseeing a pattern of torture.
“It’s incredible to see a dictator in court,” Heath said Thursday upon learning of the new charges. “The Maduro prosecution will do more to prevent the kidnapping of Americans by rogue regimes than a hundred press releases from the United Nations.”
Ex-Venezuelan spy chief is a key cooperator
Torture is considered a grave crime under international law and can be prosecuted by any competent court, regardless of the victims’ nationality, said Kenneth Roth, a senior fellow at Yale University who for decades headed Human Rights Watch. Still, prosecution of foreign officials in the U.S. is exceedingly rare, having been attempted only a handful of times, including against the son of Liberian President Charles Taylor, Russians responsible for war crimes in Ukraine and a former prison warden in Bashar Assad’s Syria.
“The problem here isn’t a lack of jurisdiction but rather selectivity of prosecution,” said Roth.
Venezuela’s government has so far been silent about the new accusations against Maduro, reflecting the challenges facing acting President Delcy Rodríguez as she strives to appease the security forces without alienating President Donald Trump, whose support she can’t lose.
Rodríguez, as Maduro’s vice president, for years oversaw key elements of Venezuela’s security apparatus, including a domestic spy agency accused of arbitrary detentions and other human rights abuses.
One of Maduro’s co-defendants, Gen. Hugo Carvajal, pleaded guilty last year to the drug trafficking charges in New York after being extradited from Spain.
Since then, Carvajal, who served as Chávez’s spymaster and head of the DGCIM for more than a decade, has been meeting with prosecutors building the case against Maduro. In an open letter to Trump last year, Carvajal, who broke with Maduro years ago, said he wanted “to atone by telling the full truth so that the United States can protect itself from the dangers I witnessed for so many years.”
Former first lady denied release for medical treatment
The new charges were unveiled as Flores, 69, was in court Thursday for a previously scheduled hearing over her request to be released so she can undergo medical treatment. Her lawyers have said she’s lost 25 pounds (11 kilograms) while imprisoned in the U.S., might have suffered a minor heart attack in July and has been told that she might need heart surgery.
U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied Flores’ request, siding with prosecutors who said she is an “extreme” flight risk.
He also pushed back at the notion that her high blood pressure was life-threatening, noting she’s already on medication for that.
Outside the courthouse, over a dozen demonstrators chanted slogans and held signs supporting her request.
