Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro trial date set for June

A start date has been set for Nicolás Maduro’s criminal trial on drug trafficking charges.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of New York City ordered Maduro to face trial on June 1.

Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail ever since U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a stunning raid in the middle of the night and brought them to New York in early January.

Both have pleaded not guilty. They face potential life prison sentences if a jury agrees they were part of a conspiracy to send cocaine into the U.S.

He and his wife were in court Wednesday. Maduro was wearing a tan prison outfit and sneakers. He was not handcuffed.

The Trump administration has defended the raid as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping.

U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to move thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by colluding with Venezuelan law enforcement to help drug kingpins.

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“I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country,” he said in Spanish at his arraignment in January.

Maduro’s lawyer Barry Pollack has said he expects to contest the legality of Maduro’s “military abduction.”

The lawyers have said there are complex legal defenses that the court must address before a trial can begin.

Maduro and Flores have not asked to be released on bail.

Protesters gathered outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan, some waving placards that read: “Free President Maduro.” Some of the protesters accused the U.S. government of pursuing fabricated charges against Maduro.

“This is what the U.S. has always done with coups and assassinations,” said Ché Marino of Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist communist party.