Nicolás Maduro, wife face new charges of conspiring to torture

U.S. officials brought new torture charges against deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, alleging that the pair employed torture and other abuse to secure subservience from the Venezuelan population.

Maduro, the ousted president who was removed from Venezuela by U.S. military forces in early January, was already charged with helping transport thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States as well as possessing machine guns. He and his wife, who faced similar charges, previously pleaded not guilty to those allegations.

The new charges, laid out in a fresh indictment made public Oct. 8, escalate a criminal case that already could have landed the couple in prison for decades, if convicted.

"President Maduro denies the charges in the new indictment and looks forward to his day in court," Barry J. Pollack, a lawyer for Maduro, said in a email to USA TODAY.

Flores' lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump, who ordered the military operation that removed Maduro from his country, said at a Cabinet meeting on March 26 that Maduro "emptied his prisons into our country" and that the U.S. had charged him with "a fraction" of what it could have.

Torture allegations include electric shock, forced seizures

The fresh charges include gruesome details about alleged torture tactics, including electric shock, forced nudity, starvation, prolonged isolation and psychological torture such as threatening to harm or kill victims' families.

In one allegation, Maduro is charged with ordering that a Venezuelan military officer who Maduro believed was meeting with a former official opposed to his rule to be arrested in November 2013. Maduro directed subordinates to "put pressure" on the officer, according to the indictment.

Those subordinates used a live electric wire about 20 times to shock the officer, including after wetting his back to increase the pain. They also beat the officer, hung him by his hands and feet to induce unconsciousness, simulated drowning him and threatened to kill him, according to the indictment.

The officer was later transferred to a new camp, where interrogators threatened that his daughter would be kidnapped and raped if he didn't confess and name confederates. Maduro, during that time, asked about the officer's treatment and watched a video of his forced confession, according to the indictment. The officer was released near the Colombia-Venezuela border, but then was rearrested in 2017 and tortured again.

In another allegation, that includes Cilia Flores, the indictment describes the couple responding to a series of mass protests in 2014 about the integrity of the 2013 Venezuelan presidential elections, in which protestors wanted Maduro to resign.

After an intelligence report said there was political dissension within the military, Maduro allegedly suggested kidnapping about a half-dozen military members and "drawing the information out of them" through torture. Flores agreed with that plan, according to the indictment, dismissing an alternative suggestion to infiltrate the officers clandestinely. In a later meeting, when Maduro was told one of the kidnapped officers refused to relent, he allegedly screwed his hands onto each other and said, "squeeze them harder."

Sometimes, Maduro made suggestions for particular torture techniques against dissidents, saying "do not let them sleep" or "pour water on them," according to the indictment. He also allegedly laughed at times after hearing about the abuse of prisoners.

U.S. citizens among alleged torture victims

The indictment includes allegations that U.S. citizens were tortured under Maduro's regime.

Around 2022, for instance, a U.S. citizen was allegedly detained while entering Venezuela and taken to a concrete structure. There, the indictment says officers repeatedly punched him, poured a liquid over his face that caused him to vomit, and forcing him to eat his own vomit.

The victim, who was falsely accused of conspiring to assassinate Maduro, was then transferred to a prison, where he was tortured with electric shock, beaten, and injected with a substance that caused seizures, the indictment says. It adds that the victim was released in about October of that year and went back to the U.S.

This story has been updated with additional information.