U.S. prosecutors have filed new charges against Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The couple are accused of conspiring to torture detainees, including U.S. citizens, during Maduro’s rule.
The charges were announced on Thursday and add to existing allegations of drug and weapons trafficking. Maduro and Flores deny those allegations.
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been held since January at a detention center in Brooklyn. They were taken there after U.S. forces detained them in a pre-dawn operation at their compound in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. On Thursday, a judge rejected Flores’s request to be placed under house arrest. Both remain in Brooklyn.
Their trial is scheduled to begin in June 2027. The new indictment concerns alleged torture cases involving U.S. citizens detained in Venezuela.
The indictment says the former presidential couple sought to “consolidate their power” by directing “a system of repression based on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detention and torture of detainees, including U.S. citizens.”
Prosecutors list alleged methods including electric shocks, suffocation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, deprivation of food, punishment cells and psychological abuse. The indictment says psychological torture included threats to kill victims’ relatives, including their children.
The prosecution says the repression was intended to keep Maduro and Flores in power. Flores is accused of playing a key role in building the repressive system, ordering torture and receiving information about the mistreatment of specific prisoners. The court document alleges that she acted this way to protect family members involved in illegal activities.
The allegations match claims made for years by released prisoners in Venezuela. Javier Tarazona, the head of a Venezuelan human-rights organization, said that he and his brother were held for 46 days in a small punishment cell after being arbitrarily detained.
Another former prisoner, Ángel Godoy, said he spent months in isolation and was not allowed to contact his wife. She did not know where he was.
The charges concern the period of Maduro’s rule. After he was removed from power, his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was sworn in as interim leader with the support of Donald Trump’s administration.
Hundreds of political prisoners were released under an amnesty law after Rodríguez took office. However, the human-rights organization Foro Penal says more than 300 people remain behind bars.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that his office had received reports of continued torture of detainees even after Maduro’s detention. In March, Türk said Venezuela continued to face “structural and systemic human-rights problems” despite the former leader’s removal from power.
Source: 24chasa.bg
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869 | 8 Oct. 2026 | 19:49
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