Trump ordered US special forces to abduct the Venezuelan President from the capital of Caracas overnight on Saturday
News Desk - The Cradle
“I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country,” Maduro told a judge, days after his abduction by US special forces from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
Without providing evidence, US President Donald Trump has accused Maduro of “narco-terrorism.”
Trump used allegations that Maduro is the leader of the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” as a pretext to launch a military operation against Venezuela on Friday.
As he left the courtroom, Maduro stated in Spanish, “I am the elected president. I am a prisoner of war. I will be free.”
In Caracas, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of the abducted president and his wife, spoke in front of Congress to express full support for acting President Delcy Rodriguez and call for the return of his parents.
Following Maduro's abduction, Trump made it clear that his government seeks to take control of Venezuela’s oil for the benefit of US energy firms whose assets were nationalized by the country’s previous leader, Hugo Chavez.
AP reported that Maduro and his wife were led into Manhattan Federal court around noon for a brief legal proceeding, which is expected to be the first step in a “prolonged legal fight” to determine if he can be put on trial in the US.
His next court date is set for 17 March.
Maduro will be represented by Barry Pollack, a prominent attorney who negotiated WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s release.
Pollack helped Assange strike a plea deal in 2024 that paved the way for his immediate release in exchange for pleading guilty to one felony count under the Espionage Act.
He is a partner at the law firm Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler and a professor at Georgetown Law School.
The judge in Maduro’s case is Alvin Kenneth Hellerstein, a senior US district judge in the Southern District of New York.
He was appointed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton and has been involved in several high-profile national security cases.
In 2001, Judge Hellerstein was assigned to oversee a large cluster of complex federal cases arising from the 11 September terror attacks.
After the attacks, many of the victims’ family members decided to pursue lawsuits in federal court, bypassing a dedicated compensation fund, to ensure that information about how the terror attacks were allowed to take place would be made public.
“The families had amassed a trove of internal documents and depositions. But none of the material was ever aired before a jury: Each of the 96 victims’ cases filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan was settled confidentially under the direction of Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who oversaw all the cases,” the New York Times reported in 2016.
According to the NYT, “One family accused him of trying to squelch a trial so that the truth about the attacks would never be made public.”
Hellerstein acknowledged that by not holding a trial, there was a “loss of information” to the public.
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