US Adds Torture Charges Against Maduro, Detained After Military Raid; UN Warns Venezuela's Human Rights Situation Has Not Fundamentally Improved

According to a BBC report, US federal prosecutors on Thursday added charges of "conspiracy to commit torture" against former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, former National Assembly president Cilia Flores, with the allegations pointing to torture suffered by US citizens detained in Venezuela during Maduro's rule. The two had previously been charged by US authorities with drug trafficking and weapons smuggling-related offenses, and the new charges were added on top of those. Maduro's defense attorney Barry Pollack said his client denies the new charges and looks forward to proving his innocence through court proceedings. The trial is scheduled for June 2027.

**Military raid and extraterritorial detention**

Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been held since January at a detention center in Brooklyn, New York. Their presence within the US judicial system stems from a pre-dawn raid by US military forces on Maduro's residence in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. Flores's application on Thursday to be transferred to house detention was denied by the judge on the spot. On the same day, Flores was added to an updated narco-terrorism indictment.

The process of US military forces directly entering the capital of a sovereign nation, seizing its former leader, and transferring him to the homeland for trial bypasses the framework of traditional extradition procedures.

**The torture system described in the indictment**

The superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday accuses the Maduros of having "long consolidated power by presiding over a repressive system that relied on violence against political opponents, arbitrary detention, and torture of detainees, including US citizens."

The indictment details torture methods including electric shocks, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged solitary confinement, starvation, punitive cells, and psychological torture. Prosecutors said psychological torture included threats to kill victims' family members and their children.

"All of this was to ensure that Maduro and Flores remained in power," prosecutors said outside the court. They characterized it as "the ultimate in corruption" and said the conduct "caused serious harm to US citizens."

The indictment also accuses Flores of playing a key role in building this repressive system, ordering torture against specific individuals, and personally receiving progress reports on the implementation of torture. Prosecutors said her motivation was to protect family members involved in illicit activities.

These allegations closely match the accounts of freed Venezuelan detainees over the years. Human rights organization head Javier Tarazona told BBC Mundo earlier this year that he and his brother were held in cramped punitive cells for 46 days following their arbitrary arrest. Another former detainee, Ángel Godoy, said he had been held in isolation for months, unable to contact his wife, who was also kept in the dark.

**The US-backed interim government and political prisoners still in custody**

After Maduro's fall, former vice president Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim leader with the support of the Trump administration. According to figures from the prisoners' rights organization Foro Penal, although hundreds of political prisoners have been released under an amnesty law since Rodríguez took office, more than 300 remain detained.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that his office had received reports of ongoing torture in Venezuela after Maduro's arrest. He noted in March this year that Venezuela's "structural and systemic human rights concerns" persist even after Maduro's fall. Venezuela's then-foreign minister accused Türk of "repeating the extremists' agenda" by citing such allegations.