Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are expected to file additional charges against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing the couple of a role in the torture of Americans held in Venezuelan prisons, according to a report from CBS News, the BBC's U.S. partner.
The new charges would add to an existing indictment against Maduro and Flores, who were seized from their compound in Caracas during a night-time raid by U.S. forces on 3 January and flown to New York to face narco-terrorism and weapons charges, which they deny. CBS reported that additional, unnamed individuals may also be charged over the alleged torture of more than a dozen Americans whom the U.S. says were wrongfully detained by the Venezuelan government while Maduro was in power.
Maduro's attorney, Barry Pollack, told CBS he had not been given notice of any additional charges. Flores, who faces drug-trafficking and weapons counts of her own, is scheduled to appear for a bond hearing in federal court in New York on Thursday. A trial for both defendants is currently set to begin in June 2027.
Maduro and 14 others were first indicted in 2020, during President Trump's first term, on charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Prosecutors have alleged that Maduro, Flores and the couple's son partnered with cartels designated as terrorist organizations to import tons of cocaine into the United States, and that they abused their positions of public trust to do so. Maduro has dismissed the case as a pretext for American designs on Venezuela's oil reserves.
His lawyers have asked the court to dismiss the charges outright, arguing Maduro remains immune from prosecution as the head of a sovereign state and that his forcible removal from Venezuela was unlawful; a judge has not yet ruled on that request. Separately, a federal judge in Miami has already entered a $314 million default civil judgment against Maduro and others over similar torture allegations brought by three Americans, after the defendants failed to respond to that lawsuit.
The expected criminal charges underscore Washington's effort to build a broader case against Maduro ahead of next year's trial, even as his legal team presses sovereign-immunity arguments that could complicate proceedings for months to come.
