A US federal indictment obtained exclusively by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo accuses former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, of orchestrating a decades-long campaign of state violence against political opponents. The 30-page document, filed by federal prosecutor James M. McDonald, adds charges of torture and repression to existing narcoterrorism charges against the couple, who are currently held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
According to prosecutors, the alleged scheme to silence dissent ran from 1999 to 2025, ending only when US forces captured Maduro during an operation in Caracas on January 3 of this year. The indictment describes how thousands of Venezuelans were allegedly harassed, detained, assaulted, tortured, or killed by people acting under the authority of the Venezuelan state to keep Maduro and Flores in power.
One case detailed in the filing involves a military officer abducted in November 2013 on Maduro’s orders after he was suspected of meeting with a former high-ranking opposition official. Investigators say the officer was interrogated for two days, subjected to electric shocks, beatings, and mock drowning, and was later transported to a camp near the Colombia-Venezuela border reportedly controlled by the FARC, Colombia’s former Marxist guerrilla group, where he was held alongside Venezuelan intelligence agents. Prosecutors say Maduro personally monitored interrogation updates and, on one occasion, gestured with his hands and ordered aides to “squeeze them harder.”
Read the full investigation at El Tiempo for additional testimonies and details.
Source: 'Apriétenlos más': la orden de Nicolás Maduro en torturas contra nueve víctimas; una fue llevada a un campamento de las Farc en la frontera (eltiempo.com).
Image: Oh-Berlin.com, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).