Justice Department Adds Torture Charge to Maduro Indictments as Judge Denies Bail to Dictator’s Wife

The ousted president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro conspired to commit torture, including of U.S. citizens, the Justice Department said on Thursday, unsealing a superseding indictment two hours before Ms. Flores appeared in federal court to unsuccessfully argue her bail application. The updated indictment “alleges conduct that is truly unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald told reporters outside the courthouse on Thursday. The Maduro regime used inhumane torture tactics like electric shocks, asphyxiation, starvation, so-called punishment cells, beatings, rape, and threats of murder against the victims and their families, he said, over 25 years to silence dissent against their authoritarian regime.“American citizens were tortured and so were thousands of Venezuelans,” Mr. McDonald said.In January, Mr. Maduro, 63, and Ms. Flores, 69, American Special Operations forces seized the couple at their residence in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and flew them to New York City, where they are being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center at Brooklyn. They pleaded not guilty to charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, drug trafficking, and weapons offenses. Federal prosecutors accuse Ms. Flores, Mr. Maduro, Mr. Maduro’s son from a prior marriage, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, as well as two government officials and the head of the drug trafficking gang Tren de Aragua of being involved in decades-long operations that sent large quantities of cocaine to the United States to enrich themselves. Besides Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores, all other defendants remain at large. The updated indictment details how the Maduros controlled Venezuela’s military, judiciary, and the military intelligence agency, and presided over a “system of repression that relied on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detentions and the torture of detainees, including United States citizens,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment. One man, named Victim-7 in the indictment, was allegedly arrested while entering Venezuela in January 2022. He was taken to a concrete house, where officers forced him to eat his own vomit. In August 2023, another American citizen, named Victim-8, was allegedly arrested while visiting family and severely injured. When an ambulance transferred him to a Venezuelan prison, prosecutors claim, officers put a gun in his mouth and electrocuted his testicles until he repeatedly fainted. He was only kept alive, his captors allegedly stated, to be used as a bargaining chip in exchange for Venezuelan prisoners. In January 2025, a third U.S. citizen, identified as Victim-9, was allegedly beaten so brutally he suffered permanent eye damage. A U.S. Marine corporal from Tennessee, Matthew Heath, who spent more than two years imprisoned after being arrested at a Venezuelan checkpoint in 2020, reacted to Thursday’s torture allegation, saying, “The Maduro prosecution will do more to prevent the kidnapping of Americans by rogue regimes than a hundred press releases from the United Nations.”Mr. Heath and another former detainee recently won a $300 million default judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against Mr. Maduro and other high-ranking officials for orchestrating systematic torture.The defendants have yet to be arraigned on the new charge. On Thursday, defense attorney Mark Donnelly, who represents Ms. Flores, told the presiding district judge, Alvin Hellerstein, that his team had “just received this indictment at 8:30 this morning. We haven’t had the time to meet with our client and discuss it yet.” The judge said he would choose a date for the arraignment and publish it on the case docket next week. He dismissed the prosecution’s argument that the new charge was relevant to Ms. Flores’s bail application. “We already have very serious charges,” Judge Hellerstein said. He described the evidence the government had accumulated as “very strong.” “The existence of cooperating witnesses and my own involvement in this case convinced me that the evidence is strong, very strong,” Judge Hellerstein said, denying the defense’s request for bail. Mr. Maduro was not in court on Thursday; his wife sat alone at the defense table. She was visibly thin, but did not appear ill. Her attorney told the judge that she lost 25 pounds and “two teeth” since her arrest in January. The judge said her appearance was “no worse and perhaps better than when I first met her at her arraignment” in January. He was not convinced by the defense’s argument that her medical problems required her to be released on bail. Ms. Flores’s attorneys argued she may have suffered a minor heart attack in July, and had “lingering lightheadedness, dizziness, and shortness of breath.” They further said she suffered permanent scarring when she was “thrown against a wall or dresser” during her capture.But Judge Hellerstein said the medical arguments were “premature” as long as Ms. Flores refuses treatment. “The problem with the health argument is that she is not willing to have catheterization at this time,” Judge Hellerstein told the defense.Mr. Donnelly pushed back, saying his client suffered from high blood pressure and experienced severe chest pains after a fight broke out in her jail unit that involved “pepper spray.” “Pills can bring that down,” the judge responded. He then told the attorney, “You and I would have chest pains also, that’s the condition of detention,” adding, “jail is not a nice place to be.” In Venezuela, Ms. Flores was a lawyer and politician. She was the first woman to serve as president of the National Assembly and served as the Attorney General of Venezuela from 2012 until the presidential election of her husband in 2013. “Ms Flores contends that she has lived her life as a public servant and that she has respect for the law and would not flee,” the judge said. But based on the severity of the allegations, he said he had to “take her assurances that she will not flee … with many grains of salt.” Defense attorneys for Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores argue that the entire case should be dismissed on grounds of sovereign and diplomatic immunity. Because the Maduros were internationally recognized heads of state when they were captured, their attorneys say, international law bars the American judicial system from prosecuting them. Federal prosecutors have opposed the motion, pointing out that the current Venezuelan government has explicitly chosen not to request immunity for the ousted leader and his wife. Judge Hellerstein has scheduled to hear oral arguments on the matter on November 17.

Justice Department Adds Torture Charge to Maduro Indictments as Judge Denies Bail to Dictator’s Wife

Justice Department Adds Torture Charge to Maduro Indictments as Judge Denies Bail to Dictator’s Wife

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