Venezuelas ex-leader Nicolás Maduro charged with conspiracy to commit torture

Prosecutors in the United States have accused Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, of conspiracy to commit torture.

The fresh charges against the couple were made public on Thursday and are in addition to the drug-trafficking and weapons charges already brought against them, which they have denied.

Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been in custody since January in a detention centre in Brooklyn, where they were taken after US forces seized them in a pre-dawn raid on their compound in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

Barry J Pollack, Maduro’s attorney, said his client denies the new charges and looks forward to his day in court.

Federal prosecutors also announced on Thursday that Flores was added to the earlier narco-terrorism charge.

The trial for both Maduro and Flores is set to begin in June 2027.

Both are being held in a detention centre in Brooklyn and are expected to remain there after Flores’s request to be moved to house arrest was denied by a judge on Thursday.

The new accusations relate to the alleged torture of US citizens who were being held in Venezuela while Maduro was in power.

The superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday accuses the former presidential couple of “entrenching themselves in power” by presiding “over a system of repression that relied on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detention, and the torture of detainees, including United States citizens”.

According to the indictment, the torture included “electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, and psychological torture”.

The prosecutors allege that the psychological torture included threats to kill victims’ families, including children.

“All of this was done to ensure that Maduro and Flores retained their power,” prosecutors said outside the courthouse on Thursday.

“This conduct, we allege, has caused significant harm to Americans, to US citizens”, prosecutors said, calling it “the epitome of corruption”.