Maduro declares himself a ‘prisoner of war’ in U.S. court appearance

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Declaring himself a “prisoner of war,” captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism and other charges while his lawyer signalled that he would challenge the case based on Mr. Maduro’s status as a head of state and his “abduction” by the U.S. military.

Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arraigned in a Manhattan federal court on Monday, two days after American troops shot their way into the couple’s compound in Caracas and spirited them away. They were remanded in custody and the next court date was set for March 17.

“I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man. I am still president of my country,” Mr. Maduro told the court. Later, as the proceedings ended, he described himself as “a kidnapped president, prisoner of war.”

Ms. Flores said she was “not guilty, completely innocent.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and capture of its leader have been condemned as illegal acts that set a dangerous international precedent by a host of countries, including American allies. That criticism continued to mount on Monday, as an emboldened Mr. Trump threatened to launch more foreign military interventions.

And Mr. Maduro’s legal team said it would litigate the issue in court.

“There are questions about the legality of this military abduction,” Barry Pollack, representing Mr. Maduro, said at the arraignment. He indicated that he would raise Mr. Maduro’s immunity from prosecution as a sitting head of state. Mr. Pollack declined to seek bail for the time being.

Mr. Pollack is an experienced Washington-based trial lawyer who represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ms. Flores was represented by Mark Donnelly, a Houston-based lawyer who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Justice.

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The case is being presided over by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old appointed by then-president Bill Clinton.

At one point, the judge cut Mr. Maduro off when he tried to speak at greater length after being asked to confirm his identity. “I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela,” Mr. Maduro began, before Judge Hellerstein interrupted: “There will be a time and a place to go into all of this.”

The four-count indictment levels accusations of cocaine trafficking, terrorism and machine-gun possession against Mr. Maduro, Ms. Flores and four other people, including Mr. Maduro’s son and Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s Interior Minister.

Prosecutors allege that the group conspired with Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas, and Colombian rebel groups FARC and ELN to move cocaine to the U.S.

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They accuse Mr. Maduro, as Venezuela’s foreign minister between 2006 and 2012, of arranging for planes to enter Mexico under diplomatic cover to pick up money from drug transactions and bring it to Venezuela.

Mr. Maduro and his wife, the indictment alleges, also used Venezuelan military forces to traffic cocaine that had previously been seized by the authorities. They are accused of sending thugs to beat, kidnap and murder their rivals in the drug business or people who owed them money.

The evidence behind the charges has not been presented or tested in court.

Paul Schiff Berman, an expert on interactions between legal systems, said that international law is clear that heads of state – even those whose status is disputed, such as Mr. Maduro – have immunity from prosecution. It’s unclear, however, whether the U.S. courts in this case would follow that standard.

A judge could decide, for instance, to defer to the U.S. government on the question of Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy. The U.S. has not recognized him as Venezuela’s legal head of state since he was accused of rigging his 2018 and 2024 re-elections.

“The question will be the degree to which the federal court defers to the executive branch determination that Maduro is not entitled to head of state immunity, or whether the court will use the international law standard and say that he is,” Prof. Berman of George Washington University said in an interview.

He said the indictment is currently too vague to assess the strength of the case against Mr. Maduro. “What the factual predicates for those allegations are, we don’t know.”

Monica Hakimi, a former U.S. State Department lawyer, said it will be up to the court to decide whether questions about the legality of the attack on Venezuela should factor into Mr. Maduro’s case.

“There’s a history of U.S. courts trying to avoid addressing the legality of presidential decisions to use military force abroad in cases that are not specifically about that,” said Prof. Hakimi, who now teaches law at Columbia University.

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More important than the legal questions in the case, she contended, is how it fits with an “extremely dangerous” international trend – including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s threats against Taiwan – of countries no longer respecting “basic international legal norms of each state’s authority over its borders.”

Since the Saturday attack, Mr. Trump has said the U.S. will now “run” Venezuela and turn over its oil infrastructure to American companies. He has indicated that he will try to rule through Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s vice-president, who was sworn in Monday as Venezuela’s interim president.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump threatened to also use military force against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, reiterated his call for the U.S. to annex Greenland and talked about deploying troops to Mexico to fight drug cartels.

Mr. Petro, a leftist who has had rhetorical clashes with Mr. Trump in the past, warned on X that he and the Colombian people would “take up arms” if Mr. Trump tried to arrest him.

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In a Monday interview with Denmark’s public broadcaster, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen reiterated that Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, had repeatedly rejected Mr. Trump’s annexation demands.

“If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.”

At a Monday meeting of the United Nations Security Council, France admonished the U.S. “The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peace dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force,” Jay Dharmadhikari, the country’s deputy UN ambassador, said.

In a statement, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the military raid in Venezuela as a violation of the United Nations Charter, which calls for the respect of countries’ territorial integrity. “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” she said.

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Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, defended the attack on Caracas as justified because Mr. Maduro has no legitimacy.

“If the United Nations in this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco-terrorist with the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this?” he said at the security council.

Some 10 kilometres from UN headquarters, outside Mr. Maduro’s arraignment, police separated rival groups of protesters.

Inside the building, Mr. Maduro’s and Ms. Flores’s lawyers indicated that both have health problems, and that Ms. Flores was injured during her capture. She wore a bandage on her head in court. Both used headsets for English-Spanish translation.

The pair are being held in a jail in Brooklyn, and their transport between it and the courthouse involved two armoured vehicles and a helicopter.

With a report from the Associated Press