Former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife will go on trial next June on drug trafficking charges, a judge said Wednesday, as their lawyers continue to object to U.S. military action that kidnapped them from power.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein set the trial date for June 1 at the request of attorneys for both sides. According to the approved schedule, defense attorneys will begin filing motions to challenge the charges in early September, and the pair will return to the courtroom on Nov. 17 for oral arguments on the motions.
Maduro, 63, and his wife Cilia Flores, 69, have been held in a Brooklyn prison since U.S. forces abducted them from their home in Caracas in a nighttime raid in early January and brought them to New York.
Neither of them spoke during Wednesday’s 15-minute hearing as each sat separately at a defense table, surrounded by their lawyers. Both have pleaded not guilty. They could face life in prison if a jury finds they were part of a conspiracy to transport cocaine into the United States
As he was led into the courtroom, the bespectacled Maduro greeted the judge’s staff and shook hands with lawyers for him and his wife. In his tan prison suit and thick mustache, he was noticeably thinner and appeared optimistic, smiling and chatting with his lawyer. He listened to a Spanish interpretation of the event through headphones and folded his hands in front of him in a prayer-like gesture. He had a black pen in his right hand and was making sporadic notes on a white pad.
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As the deputy U.S. marshals led him out, he waved to someone in the gallery.
President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid to capture Maduro as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first launched six years ago. Maduro described himself as a prisoner of war and his capture as a kidnapping.
U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to transport thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States by working with Venezuelan law enforcement to support drug lords.
“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 said he expects to challenge the legality of Maduro’s “military kidnapping.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, Pollack said he would initially challenge the charges on sovereign immunity grounds because if successful, Maduro would no longer have to litigate the case.
Lawyers said the court would have to deal with complex legal defenses before a trial could begin.
Maduro and Flores have not asked to be released on bail.
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