Ex-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says new torture allegations are ‘false’

For­mer Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in­sist­ed in court on Thurs­day that new­ly un­sealed tor­ture al­le­ga­tions against him and his wife were “false ac­cu­sa­tions.”

Maduro and Cil­ia Flo­res, both shack­led at the an­kles, were brought to court to face a rewrit­ten in­dict­ment that ex­pands from an ini­tial set of drug traf­fick­ing charges to ac­cuse them of lead­ing a state-spon­sored re­pres­sion cam­paign that tor­tured scores of vic­tims, in­clud­ing three Amer­i­cans.

Maduro twice de­fied a judge’s re­quest that he en­ter a plea to the charges, in­stead con­demn­ing them through a court­room in­ter­preter as “false ac­cu­sa­tions and false tes­ti­mo­ny.” Irked, Judge Alvin K. Heller­stein took mat­ters in­to his own hands, in­ter­ject­ing that “a plea of not guilty will be en­tered on be­half of Mr. Maduro.”

Flo­res was less com­bat­ive. Af­ter say­ing that she’d read through a ver­sion of the new in­dict­ment writ­ten in Span­ish, she told the judge through the Span­ish in­ter­preter: “I am com­plete­ly in­no­cent. I am not guilty.”

They were seized from their Cara­cas home by the U.S. mil­i­tary in a night­time raid in Jan­u­ary. Their tri­al will be­gin June 14, 2027, two weeks lat­er than pre­vi­ous­ly set, ac­cord­ing to a sched­ule ap­proved by the judge Thurs­day.

As they have in the past, Maduro and Flo­res lis­tened to the pro­ceed­ings through head­phones car­ry­ing the voice of a court­room trans­la­tor. At times, the be­spec­ta­cled Maduro looked through pa­pers in front of him.

When they en­tered the court­room, Maduro waved to peo­ple in the gallery and shook hands with one of his lawyers, Bar­ry Pol­lack, while Flo­res gave a peck on the cheek to Mark Don­nel­ly, one of her at­tor­neys.

Pol­lack said when the charges were an­nounced last week that Maduro, 63, de­nies them and “looks for­ward to his day in court.”

Pol­lack agreed with the gov­ern­ment’s re­quest to move the tri­al to June 14. He told Heller­stein the new sched­ule was “very ag­gres­sive” giv­en the new al­le­ga­tions, but added that he’s hope­ful they’ll be able to stick to it.

Ac­cord­ing to the rewrit­ten in­dict­ment, Maduro over­saw a vi­o­lent tor­ture sys­tem that beat, as­phyx­i­at­ed, and de­liv­ered elec­tric shocks to its vic­tims. He is ac­cused of per­son­al­ly rec­om­mend­ing tor­ture meth­ods, re­ceiv­ing up­dates on spe­cif­ic vic­tims’ treat­ment, and threat­en­ing to kill one pris­on­er’s child as a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture.

Flo­res, 70, a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, helped de­vel­op the re­pres­sive sys­tem and or­dered the tor­ture of some spe­cif­ic peo­ple, the in­dict­ment al­leges.

Maduro, who served as Venezuela’s pres­i­dent from 2013 un­til his cap­ture in Jan­u­ary, has been un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for years by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court over al­le­ga­tions of crimes against hu­man­i­ty, tied to his crack­down on op­po­nents. He has al­ways de­nied wrong­do­ing.

Tor­ture is a crime un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law and can be pros­e­cut­ed out­side of the na­tion where the abuse oc­curred and re­gard­less of the vic­tims’ na­tion­al­i­ty. But the pros­e­cu­tion of for­eign of­fi­cials in the U.S. is ex­ceed­ing­ly rare, hav­ing been tried on­ly a few times, in­clud­ing against the son of Liber­ian Pres­i­dent Charles Tay­lor, Rus­sians re­spon­si­ble for war crimes in Ukraine and a for­mer prison war­den in Bashar As­sad’s Syr­ia.

Ear­li­er this year, Maduro and his wife plead­ed not guilty in the U.S. drug case, which said they con­spired to flood the U.S. with co­caine. Their at­tor­neys say the case should be dis­missed on im­mu­ni­ty grounds be­cause they were the leader and first la­dy of a for­eign coun­try.

The re­vised in­dict­ment cov­ers al­le­ga­tions of tor­ture stretch­ing back to Maduro’s as­cent to pow­er in 2013, when he took over as pres­i­dent from his men­tor Hugo Chávez, who died of can­cer that year.

The cou­ple was sched­uled to re­turn to the court­room for an­oth­er pre­tri­al hear­ing on Dec. 17.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press Writer Joshua Good­man in Mi­a­mi con­tributed to this re­port.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LAR­RY NEUMEIS­TER

NEW YORK (AP)