Nicolás Maduro declared that he was not guilty of federal drug trafficking charges.
“I am not guilty,” Maduro said in Spanish to the judge, as per NBC News. He added, “I am a decent man. I am still the president of my country.” Maduro further stated, “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, also told the court that she is “not guilty, completely innocent.”
According to the indictment against Maduro, Venezuelan leaders have “abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States” for over 25 years. Maduro is “at the forefront of that corruption and has partnered with his co-conspirators to use his illegally obtained authority and the institutions he corroded to transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States.” The indictment states that Maduro “moved loads of cocaine under the protection of Venezuelan law enforcement.”
He also provided “Venezuelan diplomatic passports to drug traffickers and facilitated diplomatic cover for planes used by money launderers to repatriate drug proceeds from Mexico to Venezuela,” the document adds.
Nicolás Maduro Guerra, Maduro’s son, condemned the Trump administration for its action against his father. “If we normalize the kidnapping of a head of state, no country is safe. Today it’s Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be any nation that refuses to submit. This is not a regional problem. It is a direct threat to global political stability,” he said, as reported by the Associated Press.
