Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are expected to face new charges from prosecutors in New York. The case concerns the torture of US citizens held in Venezuelan prisons in recent years.
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Sources familiar with the investigation say the charges could be announced as early as Thursday. Investigators are examining the cases of more than a dozen Americans detained under Maduro’s government, whom US authorities have described as wrongfully arrested. According to CNN, prosecutors are also weighing charges against other people suspected of taking part in their torture.
Maduro and Flores were captured in January during a US military operation at the presidential palace in Caracas. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to commit narco-terrorism and other offenses. They are currently being held in New York without the possibility of bail.
Flores is expected to appear in court on Thursday. Her lawyer will ask for her to await trial under house arrest. Maduro’s defense attorney, meanwhile, is challenging the legality of his arrest and argues that the former president should have immunity for actions carried out while in office.
Maduro’s government arrested more than a dozen Americans. US authorities and human rights organizations have accused it of using prisoners for political purposes.
Two of them, Matthew Heath and Osman Khan, were released in October 2022 in a prisoner exchange. In a lawsuit, they alleged that they were subjected to electric shocks, threatened with sexual assault, given substances that affected their mental state and held in isolation.
The “CITGO 6” group has also spoken about brutal conditions in detention. It consists of six American oil industry executives who were arrested in Venezuela in 2017 and held for nearly five years.
The detainees were held at the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM). A United Nations report identified the agency as responsible for arbitrary detention, mistreatment and torture of political opponents and their family members.
According to the UN report, detainees were subjected to electric shocks, asphyxiation, waterboarding, beatings, sexual violence, deprivation of food and water, forced positions and exposure to extreme temperatures. These practices were intended to obtain information or confessions, as well as to intimidate and punish them. The new charges reported by CNN have not yet been officially announced by US authorities.
