The ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, will go on trial on US drug trafficking charges starting on ۱ June ۲۰۲۷, a judge said on Wednesday.
Maduro wore beige prison garb as he was led into a Manhattan courtroom by US marshals for a hearing before district judge Alvin Hellerstein in one of the most consequential criminal cases in recent history.
Maduro returned to court with his lawyers and continued objecting to the US military action that snatched him from power and deposited him in New York to face drug-trafficking charges.
Maduro, ۶۳, and Flores, ۶۹, have been held at a Brooklyn jail ever since US forces seized them from their Caracas home in a stunning middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York in early January.
Both have pleaded not guilty. They face potential life prison sentences if a jury agrees that they were part of a conspiracy to send cocaine into the US.
Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping.
US prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to move thousands of tons of cocaine into the US by colluding with Venezuelan law enforcement to help drug kingpins.
“I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country,” he said in Spanish at his arraignment in January.
Maduro’s defense lawyer, Barry Pollack, said on Wednesday he would seek to dismiss the case on the basis that Maduro should be immune from prosecution as the head of a sovereign state.
He had previously said he expected to contest the legality of Maduro’s “military abduction”.
The lawyers have said there are complex legal defenses that the court must address before a trial can begin.
Maduro and Flores have not asked to be released on bail. Judge Hellerstein has yet to set a trial date.
Maduro, a socialist who had an antagonistic relationship with the United States while leading Venezuela from ۲۰۱۳ until his capture, referred to himself as a “prisoner of war” during a ۵ January appearance. Maduro has long accused the US of seeking his removal to gain greater control of the Opec country’s vast oil reserves.
The US has called Maduro a corrupt dictator whose mismanagement of the economy led to an economic collapse and an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, and accused him of rigging his re-election votes in ۲۰۱۸ and ۲۰۲۴. It stopped recognizing him as Venezuela’s legitimate president in ۲۰۱۹.
