The charges were unsealed Thursday morning in Manhattan federal court, where a superseding indictment added one new count each against Nicolás Maduro Moros, 63, and Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, 69: conspiracy to commit torture. The grand jury had returned the indictment under seal on Tuesday; prosecutors revealed it Thursday, shortly before Flores was due in court for a scheduled hearing. It joins the narcoterrorism, cocaine importation conspiracy, and weapons charges the couple already face. The announcement came from the top of the Justice Department — Attorney General Todd Blanche, SDNY US Attorney Jamie McDonald, DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Watch: the new torture charges against Maduro and Flores. (LiveNOW from FOX/YouTube)
The indictment’s core allegation is sweeping. Prosecutors say that when Maduro became president in 2013, he “authorized the use of torture against specific individuals and oversaw a system designed to use torture, arbitrary detention, and violence as a means of repression against the political opposition.” The methods listed read like a catalog of cruelty: electric shocks, severe beatings, asphyxiation, rape and sexual assault, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, waterboarding, forced injections, and psychological torture including threats against victims’ families. Flores, prosecutors allege, helped build that system, ordered torture in some instances, and received updates on how specific prisoners were being treated.
One episode from 2013 shows how personal the system allegedly was. Maduro ordered the arrest of a Venezuelan military officer he suspected of plotting a coup; DGCIM officers then shocked the man some 20 times with a live electric wire, suspended him by his hands and feet, and waterboarded him around 30 times. In another case, Maduro personally threatened to kill a prisoner’s child, prosecutors say, as a form of psychological torture.
Nine victims are named in the indictment, including three US citizens — the hard number in the charging document. (Patel has claimed publicly that “over a dozen” Americans were tortured; that is the administration’s broader figure, not the indictment’s.) The details for the three Americans are grim: one was punched, electrocuted, and forced to eat his own vomit during eight months of imprisonment; another was beaten so badly he needed a long hospital stay, with a gun forced into his mouth; a third was handcuffed, hooded, and beaten every half hour for two days, leaving him with a permanent eye injury.
“They will now answer for their crimes,” Patel said. Blanche said the new charges “reflect the dedication of this Administration to delivering justice for the victims of torture, narcoterrorism, and organized crime.” McDonald, at a press conference, called the conduct “truly unthinkable” and “the epitome of corruption”: “The members of Maduro’s broad conspiracy were not just sitting behind a desk. These members of the conspiracy were holding the shovel. American citizens were tortured, and so were thousands of Venezuelans.”
The defense tells a different story. Maduro’s lawyer Barry Pollack said his client “denies the charges in the new indictment and looks forward to his day in court.” Flores’s lawyers, Mark Donnelly and Andres Sanchez, denied the allegations and questioned why prosecutors unsealed the indictment just before Thursday’s hearing: “We look forward to fully responding to the allegations in court at the appropriate time.” The defense is seeking dismissal on immunity grounds — arguing Maduro was a head of state and Flores a first lady — but prosecutors note the Venezuelan government itself is not joining that claim. Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied Flores’s request for home confinement on health grounds, calling her an extreme flight risk given “all the money that’s involved and all the contacts Ms. Flores has.” Neither defendant has entered a plea on the new counts; both pleaded not guilty to the original charges. Maduro calls his capture a kidnapping and himself a prisoner of war.
That capture came January 3, when US forces seized the couple at their Caracas home in a military operation ordered by President Trump and flew them to New York the same day. They are held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, with trial set for June 1, 2027. If convicted on all counts, each faces a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison, according to Reuters. Venezuela is now led by interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, and cooperation with Washington has increased since the capture. The charges build on the narco-terrorism case the US first brought against Maduro in March 2020 — a case that sat for years before January’s raid made it real.
The torture counts are the most personal charges yet against the couple — not about drugs or guns, but about what prosecutors say was done to people in cells. A jury will get the final word in June 2027.