Maduro to appear in U.S. court at 2 a.m. KST on the 6th… charged with 'narco-terrorism'

Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who was captured by the U.S. military and is being held at a federal detention center in New York, is scheduled to appear in a U.S. courtroom for the first time on the 5th (local time).

According to U.S. media outlets including The Washington Post (WP), The New York Times (NYT) and CNN on the 4th, he will appear at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan at noon Eastern time on the 5th (2 a.m. KST on the 6th) to go through arraignment proceedings, including whether he will enter a plea. His wife, Cilia Flores, who was arrested and transferred along with him, will also appear.

The U.S. Department of Justice released a new indictment against Maduro the previous day. He was indicted in March 2020, during the first Trump administration, on charges including drug trafficking and money laundering as part of 'narco-terrorism.' The latest indictment supplements those allegations.

The new indictment also adds family members and close associates to the list of defendants, including his wife Flores, their son, and Venezuela's interior minister Diosdado Cabello.

The case will be overseen by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, 92, this year. CNN reported that Judge Hellerstein, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, has handled this matter for more than a decade.

Earlier, Maduro was captured in a U.S. military raid at a safe house in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and was flown to New York by helicopter, the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, aircraft, and helicopters. He was then formally taken into custody by the New York field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Jin Young-gi, Hankyung.com reporter young71@hankyung.com