Maduro pleads not guilty in US court appearance

De­posed Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro de­clared him­self “in­no­cent” and a “de­cent man” as he plead­ed not guilty to fed­er­al drug traf­fick­ing charges in a U.S. court­room on Mon­day.

“I’m in­no­cent. I am not guilty. I am a de­cent man, the pres­i­dent of my coun­try,” Maduro told a judge.

Maduro was mak­ing his first ap­pear­ance in an Amer­i­can court­room Mon­day on the nar­co-ter­ror­ism charges the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion used to jus­ti­fy cap­tur­ing him and bring­ing him to New York.

Maduro, wear­ing a blue jail uni­form, and his wife were led in­to court around noon for a brief, but re­quired, le­gal pro­ceed­ing that will like­ly kick off a pro­longed le­gal fight over whether he can be put on tri­al in the U.S.

His next court date is set for March 17.

Edit­ed By BRID­GET BROWN, BERNARD MCGHEE, CUR­TIS YEE, R.J. RI­CO and LU­E­NA RO­DRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA