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Prosecutors in the United States have accused Venezuela’s former leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, of conspiracy to commit torture. <\/b><\/p>\n
The fresh charges against the couple were made public on Thursday and are in addition to the drug-trafficking and weapons charges already brought against them, which they have denied. <\/p>\n
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been in custody since January in a detention centre in Brooklyn, where they were taken after US forces seized them in a pre-dawn raid on their compound in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. <\/p>\n
Barry J Pollack, Maduro’s attorney, said his client denies the new charges and looks forward to his day in court.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors also announced on Thursday that Flores was added to the earlier narco-terrorism charge.<\/p>\n
The trial for both Maduro and Flores is set to begin in June 2027. <\/p>\n
Both are being held in a detention centre in Brooklyn and are expected to remain there after Flores’s request to be moved to house arrest was denied by a judge on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The new accusations relate to the alleged torture of US citizens who were being held in Venezuela while Maduro was in power.<\/p>\n
The superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday accuses the former presidential couple of “entrenching themselves in power” by presiding “over a system of repression that relied on violence against political opposition, arbitrary detention, and the torture of detainees, including United States citizens”. <\/p>\n
According to the indictment, the torture included “electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, and psychological torture”.<\/p>\n
The prosecutors allege that the psychological torture included threats to kill victims’ families, including children. <\/p>\n
“All of this was done to ensure that Maduro and Flores retained their power,” prosecutors said outside the courthouse on Thursday. <\/p>\n
“This conduct, we allege, has caused significant harm to Americans, to US citizens”, prosecutors said, calling it “the epitome of corruption”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n