US accuses Maduro and Cilia Flores of torture and human rights violations
US prosecutors filed new charges against Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores for conspiracy to torture Venezuelan citizens. Both have been detained in New York since January.
New federal charges against Maduro and Cilia Flores include systematic torture
US federal authorities filed new charges on Thursday against former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores for conspiracy to torture Venezuelan citizens as an instrument of political repression, according to infobae.com.
The revised indictment states that Maduro "authorised the use of torture against specific individuals and oversaw a system designed to use torture, arbitrary detention and violence as means of repression against political opposition". The new charges add to the drug trafficking charges both already faced for years in US courts.
Methods described in the indictment
Among the torture methods detailed in the court document are electric shocks, beatings and asphyxiation. The indictment contends that thousands of Venezuelans were "harassed, threatened, arrested, prosecuted, assaulted, tortured or killed" by orders of the government controlled by Maduro. According to the same document, the former leader personally threatened to kill the son of a detainee "as a form of psychological torture".
Three US citizens are among the victims identified in the indictment, although their names were not included in the court documents. One of them was beaten with fists, subjected to electric shocks and forced to eat his own vomit during eight months of imprisonment. Another received blows of such brutality that he required prolonged hospitalisation, and had a weapon placed in his mouth. A third was handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten every half hour for two days, which caused him permanent eye injury.
The role of the DGCIM and the figure of Carvajal
The revised indictment mentions repeatedly the Directorate General of Military Counter-Intelligence (DGCIM), identified as the institutional apparatus through which the abuses were carried out. The DGCIM was led for years by general Hugo Carvajal, one of Maduro's co-defendants. Carvajal broke with the former leader years ago, pleaded guilty last year to drug trafficking charges before a New York court and offered to testify against his former boss.
Maduro has been under investigation by the International Criminal Court for years for alleged crimes against humanity linked to the repression of opposition. He has always denied committing any irregularities.
Flores seeks house arrest due to heart problems
Cilia Flores appeared before the court on Thursday as part of a previously scheduled hearing, where her lawyers requested that the judge release her from prison and place her under house arrest, citing heart problems. The AP agency indicated that it sent a message to Maduro's lawyer seeking comments; Flores's legal representative stated that he had not yet had time to review the new charges.
Flores's lawyers, age 69, further argued that the case should be dismissed because both she and Maduro have immunity as president and first lady of a foreign state. They indicated that their client lost 25 pounds—approximately 11 kilogrammes—during her confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, that she suffers from "persistent dizziness, vertigo and shortness of breath" and that she possibly suffered a mild heart attack in July. Her lawyers requested that she be allowed to reside under 24-hour surveillance at a residence in New York, where she could receive proper medical care. They also noted that she suffered permanent scarring when she was "thrown against a wall or a dresser" during the military operation that led to her capture.
Prosecutors opposed the bail request, calling Flores an "extreme flight risk and a danger to the public" if released. They further noted that she was already transferred from prison to a local hospital when she needed medical care.
The defence lawyers, for their part, argued that Flores does not pose a flight risk because she is "determined to support her husband with her constant presence".
Detained since January, facing life imprisonment
Maduro and Flores have been detained in New York since early January, when US forces captured them at their residence in Caracas during a nocturnal raid. The administration of president Donald Trump described the operation as a "surgical law enforcement operation". Maduro, by contrast, described himself as a prisoner of war and called his detention a kidnapping.
Both pleaded not guilty in the drug trafficking case that the United States had brought against them and several alleged co-conspirators. With the new torture charges, the possibility of life imprisonment, which already existed previously, expands even further over the two defendants. Maduro served as president of Venezuela from 2013 until his capture.
Source: Google News VE — Crime