At noon this Monday, the president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro along with his wife and first lady Cilia Flores were transferred to a Manhattan court, from the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where they remain arrested, after the illegal and illegitimate kidnapping by North American forces, violating the most basic principles of national sovereignty of the states.
The case against Maduro is being handled by the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, presided over by federal judge Alvin Hellerstein. Maduro and Flores Barry Pollack appointed as attorneythis is the same person who participated in the negotiation that allowed Julian Assange’s release from prison.
The hearing lasted approximately half an hour. There the judge asked Maduro to ratify his identity. This is what he did, He introduced himself as “president of the Republic of Venezuela” and claimed to have been “kidnapped” since last Saturdaywhen he was torn from a residence in the middle of the night by an illegal military operation by the Trump government, bombing various targets and murdering more than 30 people. The operation occurred after months of pressure and threats against the country, through the stalking of military ships and aircraft.
Maduro pleaded not guilty to the four charges brought against him by the North American Department of Justice: narco-terrorist conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess such weapons in furtherance of criminal activities.
Maduro is accused of directing the Cartel of the Suns, but its existence is denied by various specialists and analysts.like political scientist Jenaro Abraham (Gonzaga University), who describes it as a label invented to justify a narrative against an enemy. Former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane also stated that Washington is “designating as terrorist something that does not exist and is not a terrorist organization.” Without going any further, in a recently revised accusation, The Department of Justice partially retracts the idea that the “Cartel of the Suns” is a real armed criminal organization and stops describing it as a “terrorist organization.”
It is evident, and Trump himself assumes this in his statements, that sIts objective is the control of Venezuela’s oil reserveswithin the framework of its decline as a hegemonic power and its competition with China and Russia.
The farce of a judicial process that Maduro faces could last for years, during which the United States will use him to extort Venezuela and try to get it to do “whatever it wants”. But Trump is not assured that everything will go as he expects. lMaduro’s arrest is strongly questioned due to its clear illegality and illegitimacy and the charges against him are thin on paper. Along with the judicial, in the political field nothing is said and The rejection in different countries spreads and is expressed in various mobilizations that are growing. Even according to polls, almost half of Americans reject Washington intervening in Venezuela. It is necessary to continue developing the rejection of this new imperialist advance of Trump and his “employees”, like Milei.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
