Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were flown from a Brooklyn jail to Manhattan, New York, in the U.S., on Monday (January 5) to face drug charges at a federal courthouse, Reuters reports.
Maduro was ousted in the biggest U.S. intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, as Special Forces swooped into Caracas on helicopters at the weekend to smash through Maduro's security cordon and nab him at the door of a safe room.
Maduro, a 63-year-old former bus driver, union leader and foreign minister named by the dying Chavez to replace him in 2013, is likely to be in a cell for 23 hours a day at the Metropolitan Detention Center where hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's friend Ghislaine Maxwell both passed through and denounced inhumane conditions.
The Maduros were due in Manhattan federal court at 1200 p.m. EST (1700 GMT).
The former president is accused of overseeing a cocaine-trafficking network that partnered with violent groups including Mexico’s Sinaloa and Zetas cartels, Colombian FARC rebels and Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang.
Maduro has long denied all the allegations, saying they were a mask for imperialist designs on Venezuela's oil.
