Politics
JUST IN: Plane Carrying Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro Lands In New York
A flight carrying deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia, arrived in New York on Saturday evening, where the couple will face charges of narco-terrorism, drug-trafficking and more.
The flight was seen touching down at the Stewart International Airport just south of Poughkeepsie, which houses a military airfield.
Saturday evening’s arrival comes just over 12 hours after Maduro was captured in a daring raid carried out by U.S. special forces operators in conjunction with federal law enforcement. Several Venezuelan military installations were struck in the capital city of Caracas and surrounding states in order to support ground forces and create diversions for their exits.
Upon landing, ground forces quickly snatched up the couple before they could retreat to a safe room, though U.S. officials expressed confidence that they would have been able to extract them even if they had made it to the room. The raid was executed without any U.S. fatalities or downed aircraft.
Maduro was initially transported aboard the USS Iwo Jima before presumably being handed off at a U.S. airfield, at which point the couple was transported to New York. Aerial footage showed an aircraft carrying deposed dictator taxiing on the runway at Stewart International shortly after 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York following their capture during a U.S. military operation in Venezuela. Both face charges including conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
These charges stem from allegations that they participated in a corrupt government regime involved in drug trafficking operations that flooded the United States with cocaine, coordinating with armed groups designated as terrorists. The indictment, a superseding version of one originally filed in 2020, adds Flores as a defendant and describes the Venezuelan leadership as leveraging power to protect illegal activities.
he narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy counts each have a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with mandatory minimums of 20 years for narco-terrorism (doubling the standard drug trafficking minimum due to the terrorism link) and 10 years for cocaine importation. For possession of machine guns and destructive devices, the penalty includes a mandatory minimum of 30 years imprisonment.
The conspiracy to possess such weapons allows for up to life imprisonment. These sentences could run consecutively, potentially resulting in effective life terms without parole, in addition to fines up to $10 million per count.
Given the charges are filed in the Southern District of New York, they are likely to be held in pretrial detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, a federal facility commonly used for high-profile detainees. They are expected to be arraigned in federal court in the district next week.
