Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is back in court for a pre-trial hearing in his US drug trafficking case

Nicolás Maduro was re­turned Wednes­day to a Man­hat­tan cour­t­house where lawyers plan to re­quest a June tri­al date for his drug traf­fick­ing case as his at­tor­neys ob­ject to the U.S. mil­i­tary ac­tion that snatched the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent from pow­er and de­posit­ed him in New York.

Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, 69, have been held at a Brook­lyn jail since U.S. forces seized them from their Cara­cas home in a mid­dle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

Both have plead­ed not guilty. They face po­ten­tial life prison sen­tences if a ju­ry agrees that they were part of a con­spir­a­cy to send co­caine in­to the U.S.

In a let­ter to Judge Alvin K. Heller­stein be­fore Wednes­day’s hear­ing, pros­e­cu­tors said lawyers will re­quest that the tri­al be sched­uled for June, with pre­tri­al mo­tions by de­fense lawyers to be filed by ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­fend­ed the raid as a “sur­gi­cal law en­force­ment op­er­a­tion” in a crim­i­nal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called him­self a pris­on­er of war and his cap­ture a kid­nap­ping.

U.S. pros­e­cu­tors say Maduro car­ried out a con­spir­a­cy to move thou­sands of tons of co­caine in­to the U.S. by col­lud­ing with Venezue­lan law en­force­ment to help drug king­pins.

“I am not guilty. I am a de­cent man, the con­sti­tu­tion­al pres­i­dent of my coun­try,” he said in Span­ish at his ar­raign­ment in Jan­u­ary.

Maduro’s lawyer, Bar­ry Pol­lack, has said he ex­pects to con­test the le­gal­i­ty of Maduro’s “mil­i­tary ab­duc­tion.”

The lawyers have said there are com­plex le­gal de­fens­es that the court must ad­dress be­fore a tri­al can be­gin.

Maduro and Flo­res have not asked to be re­leased on bail. —NEW YORK (AP)

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Sto­ry by MICHAEL R. SISAK and LAR­RY NEUMEIS­TER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press