NEW YORK — Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro told a federal court in New York on Thursday that new torture charges against him were “false accusations and false testimony,” prompting the judge to enter a not-guilty plea on his behalf, BBC News and The Guardian reported.
“I reject this document entirely,” Maduro said through a translator before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein cut in. His wife, Cilia Flores, said: “I am completely innocent. I am not guilty.” The couple, captured in a U.S. military raid in Caracas in January, remain jailed in Brooklyn.
A rewritten indictment unveiled last week accuses them of creating and maintaining “a violent system of repression” in which thousands of Venezuelans were killed, harassed or tortured, using methods including “electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation,” the BBC said. Prosecutors allege U.S. citizens were among the victims.
The torture counts were added to earlier narco-terrorism, drug-trafficking and weapons charges. Their lawyers argue the case should be dismissed on sovereign-immunity grounds. Both sides want the June 2027 trial moved from June 1 to June 14, The Guardian reported.
Sources: BBC News, The Guardian
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