Maduro pleads not guilty to narco-terrorism in New York court
Nicolás Maduro has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in a New York court on Monday, after being captured in Caracas in an extraordinary US raid.
Maduro entered the plea in the Manhattan courthouse after he and his wife were charged with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and firearms offences.
“I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country,” Maduro said, before being cut off by the judge. His wife Cilia Flores also pleaded not guilty. The next hearing was set for March 17.
Maduro has retained lawyer Barry Pollack, best-known for representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, to defend him in New York.
US forces extracted Maduro from his compound in Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday, in a move that sent shockwaves around the world and sparked widespread concerns that the Trump administration may have breached international law.
Ahead of the hearing, dozens of protesters gathered outside the courthouse, with some bearing signs calling for Maduro and his wife to be freed and at least one holding a Trump flag. Others held signs saying “USA hands off Venezuela”.
Prosecutors say Maduro ran an organisation that dispatched thousands of tonnes of cocaine to the US and enabled corruption that enriched his family. He was charged on counts of narco-terrorism, cocaine importation and possession of machine guns.
The case could raise questions about the circumstances of Maduro’s capture and a statement by Trump at the weekend that he planned to “run” Venezuela until a transition of power.
Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy who has offered to “collaborate” with the US, has been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president.
In other developments on Monday:
Shares in some major US-listed oil companies rose.
Chevron, already operating in Venezuela under a licence from the Trump administration, was up nearly 6 per cent.
Venezuelan bonds extended their rally of the past year, as the price of the country’s sovereign debt surged almost 30 per cent.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened a second strike unless the government in Venezuela “behave”.
Machado ‘planning to go back’ to Venezuela ‘as soon as possible’
The leader of Venezuela’s opposition said she is “planning to go back” to the country “as soon as possible” following the US’s intervention to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power.
María Corina Machado travelled to Norway last month to receive the Nobel Peace Price, but had previously been in hiding in Venezuela following a 2024 election that was widely regarded as having been stolen by Maduro, who was the incumbent leader at the time.
Machado said on Fox News’s Hannity programme the actions of January 3 “will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny” and that they marked a “huge step towards a democratic transition”.
The opposition leader told Sean Hannity that she had not spoken to Donald Trump since October 10, the day she was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Asked by the host about reports she had offered the prize to Trump, she said “it hasn’t happened” but that the award was for the Venezuelan people and “we want to give it to him, share it with him”.
Trump says US could reimburse oil companies that invest in Venezuela
Donald Trump said the US government could reimburse oil companies that invest in Venezuela as he looks to coax energy groups into spending “billions of dollars” to revitalise the country’s ailing infrastructure.
The president on Monday acknowledged that oil producers and service groups would need to spend a “very substantial amount of money” to upgrade Venezuela’s decaying energy infrastructure but insisted they would “do very well”.
“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us, or through revenue,” he said in an interview on NBC News.
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