Nicolas Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela who was removed by United States forces on January 3, is set to appear in a US court for only the second time.
In the weeks since he was abducted to the US, Maduro’s defence has offered only a preview of how it will approach the extraordinary case on Thursday. In his first court appearance, in January, Maduro maintained he was not a traditional defendant but a “prisoner of war” and “kidnapped” president.
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Many questions surrounding Maduro’s prosecution remain unanswered in the run-up to Thursday’s hearing: how Maduro may deploy a carousel of legal arguments to challenge the case; what evidence prosecutors will present to support their claims of “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking; and ultimately, what would happen in the event federal prosecutors prove unsuccessful.
While the US has a history of enforcing its domestic law against foreign individuals, the prosecution of sitting and former heads of state has been exceedingly rare.
The most recent examples include the prosecution of Manuel Antonio Noriega, then the leader of Panama, in 1989, and more recently, the prosecution of former Honduran leader Juan Orlando Hernandez in 2024, explained Renato Stabile, who served as the court-appointed defence lawyer for Orlando Hernandez.
“We’re in largely uncharted territory,” Stabile told Al Jazeera.
Will the case get thrown out?
Legal experts have pointed to a range of challenges Maduro’s team could mount to get the case thrown out before a trial begins. The defence has already argued that the case should be null, pointing to Maduro’s role in Venezuela at the time of his abduction and maintaining that Maduro was taken into custody illegally.
The US deployed 150 military aircraft in its raid to abduct Maduro, knocking out the country’s air defence as it created a massive power cut across the capital, Caracas. Both an FBI unit and the US Army’s specialised Delta Force were deployed to storm Maduro’s compound. Venezuela has said at least 75 people were killed in the operation.
The Trump administration has maintained that the goals were purely domestic law enforcement, and unrelated to its explicit calls for regime change or access to Venezuela’s state-controlled oil industry that accompanied a weeks-long military build-up and oil embargo.
Trump, however, has since pledged to “run” Venezuela with his administration continuing to assert influence over the government of interim-President Delcy Rodriguez.
The US executive branch has long held the position that the federal government can pursue domestic law enforcement arrests abroad. But according to a panel of federal prosecution experts writing on the LawFare nonprofit website in January, “Maduro will undoubtedly argue that even if such authority exists, it is limited – and that his arrest falls outside the bounds of what’s permitted.”
Maduro could chart several courses in making the case, including arguing that continuing with the case would make the court itself complicit in the government’s actions, an apparent blatant violation of international law. A form of that argument proved unsuccessful in the Norriega case, the panel noted, although Maduro will likely try to argue the details of the US military operation in Panama in 1989 and the January raid in Venezuela are markedly different.
Maduro’s team could also argue that the government misused the US military in domestic law enforcement, although experts noted that the government has, for decades, maintained that the military can be used to “protect federal functions”.
The panel assessed that all options available to Maduro will likely face an “uphill battle”.
Finally, Maduro’s team could invoke the so-called “head of state” immunity doctrine, arguing he remains the head of state of Venezuela and therefore is protected from prosecution under US common law.
The US government has, since 2019, maintained that Maduro is not the legitimate head of state of Venezuela, pointing to a string of disputed elections, the most recent in 2024.
How strong is the indictment?
If challenges related to Maduro’s position and how he was arrested prove unsuccessful, Orlando Hernandez’s defence lawyer, Stabile, argued the current indictment laid out by federal prosecutors is far from a slam dunk.
Maduro is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit “narco-terrorism”, with the indictment saying he was involved in drug and arms trafficking in support of the FARC, the ELN and other groups designated “foreign terrorist organisations” by the US.
But notably, the Department of Justice has largely backed away from a pillar of its initial 2020 indictment against Maduro: claims that he was the leader of the “Cartel de los Soles”, which it, at the time, described as “drug-trafficking organisation” that “prioritised using cocaine as a weapon against America and importing as much cocaine as possible into the United States”.
The new indictment, unsealed shortly after Maduro’s abduction, instead describes the Cartel de los Soles as a system of “patronage” within Venezuela’s government, and removes any reference to a coordinated effort by the Cartel de Soles to use drugs as a weapon against the US. The original indictment referenced the Cartel de los Soles 33 times, reduced to only two mentions in the new version.
The second charge focuses on drug trafficking, pointing to various instances where Maduro, his wife and other officials allegedly used their positions and resources – including the use of private planes under diplomatic cover – to directly support and benefit from drug trafficking. The third and fourth charges are largely seen as hinging on the first two: illegal possession and conspiracy to possess automatic machineguns.
While more evidence could be presented in the weeks, months and possibly years ahead, Stabile said prosecutors appear to be building a case largely built on informants, in what he described as a “snitch indictment”.
Notably, the indictment details the involvement of former Venezuelan General Hugo Carvajal in several of the alleged crimes. Carvajal has already pleaded guilty to “narcoterrorism”, drug trafficking and weapons charges in the US.
Last year, in a letter addressed to the “American people”, Carvajal, who has yet to be sentenced, promised to “provide additional details” that would further reveal the Maduro government’s alleged crimes.
Stabile argued the prosecution will “look very weak” if its case relies on witnesses who have already struck cooperation deals with the US government.
That feeds the perception that “they’re going to say whatever they need to say to get out of jail.”
He also pointed to the difficulty prosecutors face in empanelling a jury unaware of the case’s broader political landscape and the contradictory messaging from the Trump administration.
“Any of the jurors will likely know the story. They will know how the US went in and took him out of Venezuela,” Stabile said.
“In a typical criminal case, you’re not really able to argue the political aspects of the case. In other words, typically, you can’t argue the motivations of the prosecution team in bringing the charges … [The defence] benefit here.”
“I could very easily see – if you get the right juror to be a holdout – a hung jury here,” he said, referring to situations where a jury is unable to reach a verdict, and prosecutors are confronted with needing to retry the case, strike a deal or abandon prosecution.
Long road ahead
In the short term, the case against Maduro has stalled largely due to the ongoing funding battle.
In late February, Maduro’s lawyers said the US government was blocking Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from receiving legal funding from the government of Venezuela.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, argued in court filings that the move deprived Maduro of his “constitutional right to counsel of his choice”.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors shot back that “both defendants…surely knew that the US Government did not consider them to hold legitimate positions”, maintaining that the couple were still free to use their personal funds for a lawyer.
In response, lawyers for Maduro and Flores have called for the case to be thrown out. The issue will likely be addressed at Thursday’s hearing.
It remains unclear what would happen if the case against Maduro were, in fact, to be thrown out, or if he were eventually acquitted.
Typically, in those circumstances, an individual would be free. But because Maduro is not a US citizen, he could theoretically be detained by immigration enforcement agents upon his release.
Argentina has also requested Maduro’s extradition from the US on charges of committing crimes against humanity in his government’s crackdown on protesters and political dissidents. The case was brought by Venezuelans who suffered under the alleged abuses.
Stabile predicted a long road before clarity emerges on Maduro’s case.
“We probably have six to nine months of motions … just to resolve the legal issues around his arrest and prosecution. Then there will be discovery,” he said, referencing the period when both sides will gather and exchange evidence.
“I don’t expect the case to go to trial for at least a couple of years,” he said.
