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Maduro arrives by helicopter in New York City, where he will face legal proceedings
New York.- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro arrived this Saturday in New York City in a helicopter that landed at a helipad on the banks of the Hudson River, near 31st Street, on the west side of Manhattan, after having been previously transported by military aircraft to an airport in the north of the state.
Maduro will be transferred to a federal facility linked to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and subsequently to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal prison located in the New York borough of Brooklyn, according to local media.
The Venezuelan president, formally accused in 2020 by the Southern District Attorney’s Office of New York, which this Saturday made public a substitute accusation in that same court, will face charges of narcoterrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, and crimes related to automatic weapons.
The Boeing 757 military aircraft that transported Maduro landed on the afternoon of this Saturday at the Stewart Air National Guard Base, a military airport located in the north of New York state, after having been captured in the early hours by US forces in Caracas.
Dozens of agents from different federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the DEA, were waiting for him in Stewart, with temperatures close to two degrees Celsius below zero. Maduro disembarked from the plane handcuffed and was transported under custody by helicopter to Manhattan.
The next step in your case is expected to take place in the coming days before a federal judge in Manhattan.
The original accusation from the New York court, based on a DEA investigation, points to Maduro as the alleged leader of the so-called Cartel of the Suns, a network allegedly linked to high-ranking Venezuelan military officials who sought to enrich themselves and “use cocaine as a weapon against the United States”.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, confirmed this Saturday that his country carried out “successfully a large-scale attack” on Venezuelan soil and that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were “captured and taken out of the country”.
Trump later added that both remained detained on a military ship and would be transferred to New York to be prosecuted for drug trafficking, while offering details of the operation carried out by U.S. special forces.
For his part, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said today that he is deeply alarmed by the recent escalation in Venezuela, which could have “worrying implications for the region”.
Also, the UN Security Council will meet urgently next Monday to address the situation following the attacks that affected civilian and military infrastructure and claimed the lives of at least 40 people in the capital and the nearby states of La Guaira, Miranda and Aragua, according to The New York Times.
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