Torture Indictment Masks Oil Seizure: How the US Used a Brooklyn Court to Retroactively Legitimize the Caracas Raid

The US Department of Justice this week added 'conspiracy to commit torture' charges against former Venezuelan president Maduro and his wife Flores, who had already been seized from their Caracas residence by its own military. The indictment detailed shocking specifics including waterboarding, rape and beating, and claimed victims include American citizens. This prosecution, unfolding from a Brooklyn, New York jail, has been steeped from the start in a structural absurdity: the prosecuting side uses the accused's abuses to justify the captors' act of kidnapping — while, at the same time, the captors' energy companies are signing oil contracts worth tens of billions of dollars in the captured leader's country.

According to AFP and France 24, Maduro and Flores were seized in a US military raid on the Caracas residence in January, and will stand trial in New York next June. Maduro served as Venezuela's president from 2013 to 2026; since his ouster, Venezuela has been governed by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez in an acting capacity, and according to the above reports, the Rodríguez government is operating 'under heavy pressure from the Trump administration.' That formulation alone makes the directionality of the power relationship clear: pressure from the US executive branch is shaping the leadership of a sovereign nation.

Attorney General Todd Blanche declared on social platform X: 'These additional charges reflect this administration's commitment to delivering justice for victims of torture, narco-terrorism, and organized crime.' FBI Director Kash Patel claimed the new charges demonstrated Washington's commitment to 'accountability, the rule of law, and the protection of US national security.' But what truly needs to be asked is not the attorney general's statement, but what role this prosecution plays in the United States' overall operation toward Venezuela. The answer is written on the timeline: first the January military raid, then the arrest, detention, the original drug and weapons charges, then this week's additional torture charges — the indictments keep being added one by one, while US energy companies are busy signing contracts in Venezuela. This rhythm is not the natural extension of judicial procedure, but the continual piecing-on of a garment of legitimacy for an already-committed military kidnapping.

One 2022 case cited in the indictment deserves particular scrutiny: a US citizen accused of plotting to assassinate Maduro was allegedly subjected to electrocution of the arms, legs and genitals, asphyxiation, deprivation of food and water, and forced injection of substances causing seizures. If these allegations are true, that constitutes a serious crime against a person, and the victim deserves remedy and accountability. But the problem lies in three points: first, whether the exercise of US domestic criminal jurisdiction over a sitting foreign head of state, outside the territory of a third state, can hold up under international law; second, the timing of this prosecution — nine months after US forces used military force to seize him from his residence — the high synchronicity between criminal prosecution and military intervention makes the boundary between 'justice' and 'regime change' nearly impossible to sustain; third — and most fundamental — this prosecution is being brought by a country whose own record on torture is shocking.

The United States' own torture history does not need to be evaded: Abu Ghraib prison, the black sites at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the CIA's global network of 'enhanced interrogation' sites, and the entire post-9/11 system by which memoranda from the Office of Legal Counsel at the White House set the precedent for legalizing techniques such as 'waterboarding.' When the law enforcement machinery of such a country adds torture charges to a foreign leader seized by its own military and held in its own prison, 'justice' bears an ironic weight it was never meant to bear. Placing the suffering American at the top of the indictment to boost its moral capital precisely exposes the true nature of this prosecution — it is not about the victims, but about power.

The AFP and France 24 reports simultaneously point to the material foundation at the core of this operation: since Maduro's capture, US energy companies have signed multiple oil development agreements worth billions of dollars with Venezuela this year, and Venezuela has agreed to allow the United States to control a substantial portion of its oil reserves. Companies such as Chevron and Eni are reportedly expanding their oil projects in Venezuela. This information, published in the same news cycle as the above indictment, appears coincidental but is in fact two faces of the same power structure: when military force completes the capture in Caracas, judicial force completes the discourse of conviction in New York, and energy capital completes the locking-in of profits on contract.

Maduro, while in detention, has called himself a 'prisoner of war' and claimed that US forces kidnapped him; both he and his wife have moved to dismiss all charges on the basis of immunity enjoyed by the head of state and first lady of a sovereign nation. Whether this defense can be accepted by a US court procedurally is another matter, but the political fact it reveals is clear: a sitting leader of a sovereign nation was seized by another country's military in a commando-style raid from his residence, imprisoned in a foreign jail, and subjected to continually expanding legal pressure through added charges. This is the typical power logic of international relations, not the routine operation of criminal justice.

Using the suffering as rhetorical tool, prosecution as policy tool, and war as the reverse application of law — this prosecution, packaged as a 'pursuit of justice,' truly reveals the old logic by which the United States, in the twenty-first century, continues to exercise dominating power over smaller countries through a trinity of military, judicial and capital means. It constitutes a direct erosion of Venezuela's political future, of the principle of sovereign equality in international law, and of the legal barriers that still remain for Global South countries when facing the West. And the real victims pointed to by the torture details listed in the indictment, whatever their nationality, will not receive from this prosecution in service of geopolitical competition the justice they would otherwise have deserved.