Maduro Hit With New Indictment Charging Torture Conspiracy, Alleging Electric Shocks and Beatings
The revised U.S. indictment, unsealed Thursday, also charges his wife Cilia Flores and says three American citizens were among the victims.
U.S. authorities on Thursday charged former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with conspiring to torture his own citizens to maintain his hold on power. The revised indictment, unsealed in New York, adds human rights allegations to the drug trafficking case Maduro was already fighting.
"He authorized the use of torture against specific individuals and oversaw a system designed to use torture, arbitrary detention and violence as a means of repression against the political opposition," the indictment says. It newly charges both Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, with torture conspiracy. Prosecutors allege that thousands of Venezuelans were harassed, threatened, arrested, prosecuted, assaulted, tortured or killed by people acting at the behest of the government Maduro controlled.
The document describes electric shocks, beatings and asphyxiation. It alleges Maduro signed off on methods of torture and personally threatened to kill one prisoner's child as a form of psychological torture. It repeatedly points to Venezuela's feared DGCIM military intelligence agency, which was headed for many years by one of Maduro's co-defendants, Gen. Hugo Carvajal. Carvajal broke with Maduro years ago, pleaded guilty last year to drug trafficking charges in New York, and has offered to testify against his former boss.
Three of the alleged victims were U.S. citizens, who are not named in the court papers. One was punched, given electric shocks and forced to eat his own vomit during eight months in prison, according to the indictment. Another was beaten badly enough to need a long hospital stay and had a gun put in his mouth. A third was handcuffed, hooded and beaten every half hour for two days, and suffered a permanent eye injury.
Maduro and Flores have been jailed in New York since early January, when U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid. Both have pleaded not guilty in the drug case, which was first brought years ago against them and numerous alleged co-conspirators. They already faced potential life sentences if convicted. A message seeking comment was sent to Maduro's lawyer. The Trump administration has defended the raid as a "surgical law enforcement operation," while Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping. He has also been under investigation for years by the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes against humanity, and he has always denied wrongdoing.
Flores was in court Thursday for a previously scheduled hearing, where her attorney said he had not yet had time to review the new allegations. Her lawyers asked a judge to free her from jail and place her under 24-hour guard at a residence in New York, saying she has medical problems that jail cannot treat well. They said she has lost 25 pounds at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, has been told she might need heart surgery, and may have suffered a minor heart attack in July. Prosecutors opposed the request, writing that she would pose an "extreme risk of flight and danger to the public." Her lawyers countered that she would not flee because she is intent on supporting her husband with her constant presence.
