Maduro pleads not guilty to torture charges as Caracas calls him ‘kidnapped’ and trial slips to 2027

Full analysis

What happened Why it matters How each country tells it Where accounts conflict Room for disagreement Our assessment Sources and evidence

What happened

In federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores were brought in ankle shackles to answer a rewritten U.S. indictment that now adds conspiracy to commit torture to the narcoterrorism, cocaine importation and weapons charges they already deny. The Associated Press account carried by NBC News describes Maduro twice refusing U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s request to enter a plea, telling the judge through an interpreter that the case rests on "false accusations and false testimony," until Hellerstein interjected that "a plea of not guilty will be entered on behalf of Mr. Maduro." Flores answered for herself: "I am completely innocent. I am not guilty." The EFE copy published by El Carabobeño and El Universal adds that Maduro called the charges a "sum of elements and attacks" he had known before, and that both defendants said their lawyers had explained the new accusation and given them a copy in Spanish.

The indictment was unsealed a week earlier. NBC’s report says it accuses Maduro of overseeing a state-sponsored repression campaign that beat, asphyxiated and electrocuted scores of victims, including three Americans, and of personally recommending torture methods, receiving updates on specific detainees and threatening to kill a prisoner’s child. Al Jazeera carries the alleged language: "Squeeze them harder" in 2014, and suggestions of sleep deprivation and pouring water on detainees. Prosecutors did not accuse either defendant of personally carrying out the torture. Flores, 70, a former attorney general, is alleged to have helped build the system and ordered the torture of some individuals. The indictment traces the conduct to Maduro’s rise to the presidency in 2013.

The hearing then moved to scheduling. Hellerstein reset the trial from June 1 to June 14, 2027. NBC reports that defense lawyer Barry Pollack agreed to the government’s proposed date but called it "very aggressive" given the new charges, adding he hoped the defense could meet it. La Patilla, an opposition-leaning Venezuelan outlet, reports that the defense sought more time to prepare motions against the new counts and to pursue its claim of sovereign immunity, and that the 91-year-old judge struggled to speak at times and paused at length while considering the calendar. The next hearing is set for December 17, with a final pretrial conference on June 7.

Outside the courtroom, Venezuela’s governing party treated the day as something other than a legal proceeding. El Carabobeño’s report leads with Táchira Governor Freddy Bernal declaring that the PSUV "reaffirms the flags of absolute liberty" for Flores and that she and Maduro are "kidnapped in the United States," seized on January 3 by an "imperial power violating all the rules of international law." Lawmaker Iris Varela called the hearing date a deliberate insult timed to Flores’s 70th birthday, writing that it was "not chance, it is a miserable play." The same report notes that interim president Delcy Rodríguez, assembly president Jorge Rodríguez and interior minister Diosdado Cabello had not spoken about the hearing. Al Jazeera adds that Maduro himself called the January capture a kidnapping at his first hearing, and that Delcy Rodríguez initially called it an "illegal, illegitimate kidnapping" before moving close to the Trump administration and overseeing the opening of state oil to foreign companies.

Why it matters

The case tests whether a U.S. court can try a captured former head of state for abuses committed in his own country. NBC’s AP account places it among only a handful of American prosecutions of foreign officials for torture, citing the son of Liberian President Charles Taylor, Russians accused of war crimes in Ukraine and a former prison warden in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Torture is a crime under international law and can be prosecuted outside the country where it occurred, regardless of the victims’ nationality, which is precisely the legal opening the new charges exploit. If the indictment survives the immunity motion, it becomes a precedent for pursuing leaders whose alleged violence never touched American soil.

For Venezuela, the hearing keeps two accounts of reality in open competition. Chavismo’s officials insist Maduro and Flores are hostages, while the successor government has tacitly accepted Washington’s role by deepening energy cooperation. The calendar leaves that contradiction unresolved for another eight months, with the next hearing in December and the trial the following June.

How each country tells it

• 🇺🇸
  NBC News · United States · wire copy

  A U.S. law-enforcement account that leads with the new torture counts and the three Americans among the victims, then details Maduro refusing to plead until the judge enters a not-guilty plea for him.
• 🇻🇪
  El Carabobeño · Venezuela · wire copy

  The Chavista line that Maduro and Flores are ‘secuestrados’ in the United States, with party officials denouncing the hearing date as an insult timed to Flores’s 70th birthday.
• 🇻🇪
  La Patilla · Venezuela · original reporting

  An opposition-leaning procedural account whose lead is Judge Hellerstein’s postponement of trial to June 14, 2027, and the defense’s request for more time to challenge the new indictment.
• 🇨🇴
  El Universal · Colombia · wire copy

  A straightforward regional account of the not-guilty pleas and the new torture and narcoterrorism counts, ending on the judge’s postponement of the trial to June 14, 2027.
• 🇶🇦
  Al Jazeera · Qatar · original reporting

  A global account that reports the specific torture allegations in detail, then places them inside Venezuela’s political story: Delcy Rodriguez initially called the January capture an illegal kidnapping before moving close to the Trump administration.

Where accounts conflict

The first conflict is how Maduro’s plea was entered. The AP dispatch carried by NBC News says he twice defied Hellerstein’s request to plead, forcing the judge to enter the not-guilty plea on his behalf. The EFE copy published by El Carabobeño and El Universal says Maduro "se declaró no culpable" — declared himself not guilty — and told the judge the indictment was false. The formal outcome is identical in every account; the difference bears on whether the defendant accepted the court’s authority or contested it.

The second is the word for how the couple arrived in New York. NBC describes a nighttime U.S. military raid that seized them from their Caracas home. Al Jazeera uses "abducted from Caracas in a United States military operation," closer to Chavismo’s claim that they were "secuestrados" on January 3 by an imperial power. Whether the capture was a lawful arrest or a kidnapping is not a matter of translation; it is the central political claim of the Maduro camp.

Room for disagreement

The strongest case that the trial never happens is already on the record. Maduro’s lawyers have asked for dismissal on immunity grounds, arguing that he and Flores were the leader and first lady of a sovereign country. The rarity of such prosecutions in the United States supports that claim: by the AP’s count, only a few foreign officials have ever been tried for torture. If Hellerstein accepts the immunity argument for the narcotics counts and finds the torture charges reach official acts, the case could end before December. Chavismo’s insistence that Maduro was kidnapped, not lawfully detained, supplies the political companion to that legal claim and could encourage governments that regard the capture as a violation of sovereignty.