U.S. attacks Venezuela, captures Maduro and his wife

By Jill Lawless

The United States carried out a lightning military strike on Venezuela early Saturday, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and spiriting them out of the country. American officials say the pair will face narco-terrorism charges in U.S. courts.

The U.S. Defense Department says the operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro lasted less than 30 minutes early Saturday morning.

The overnight operation left Venezuela reeling, with its leadership uncertain and details of casualties and the impact on its military still to emerge. Countries across the region and the wider world were absorbing the destabilizing implications of the apparently unilateral U.S. action.

Explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, early Saturday. At least seven blasts were heard in an attack that lasted less than 30 minutes. The targets appeared to include military infrastructure. Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas and another military installation in the capital was without power.

Trump said in a social media post that Maduro “has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country.”

Nicolas Maduro following his capture by U.S. forces early Saturday.

Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told The Associated Press that Maduro and Flores were at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation outside Caracas when they were captured.

Venezuelan officials said people had been killed, but the scale of casualties was unclear.

The attack followed months of escalating pressure by the Trump administration, which has built up naval forces in the waters off South America and since early September has carried out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Last week the U.S. struck Venezuelan soil with a CIA drone strike at a docking area alleged to have been used by drug cartels.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social network X that Maduro and Flores had both been indicted in the Southern District of New York and “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

She said Maduro faced charges of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”

Maduro was indicted in March 2020, during Trump’s first term, but the indictment against Flores was not previously made public.

Trump said Maduro and his wife are aboard a U.S. warship and will face prosecution in New York.

The U.S. does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the legal implications of the strike under U.S. law were not immediately clear.

The Trump administration maintains that Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and claims he has effectively turned Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups.

Mike Lee, a U.S. senator from Utah, said on X that the action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”

Maduro’s government accused the United States of an “imperialist attack” on civilian and military installations and urged citizens to take to the streets.

Armed individuals and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. But in other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.

By law, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez should take power, but there was no confirmation that had happened.

There was no immediate comment from Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. She was in hiding for almost a year before traveling to Norway last month to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump told Fox News that the U.S. was deciding what is next for Venezuela and said “we’ll be involved in it very much” as to who will govern the country.

Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America expert at the Chatham House international affairs think tank, said the U.S. strikes “open up an entirely unforeseen, in many ways unexpected, series of events,” and it’s unclear what kind of government will emerge.

He said elements of the Trump administration and the Venezuelan opposition have held a “dangerously naive” belief that “if you decapitate the regime, figuratively speaking, by removing Maduro … that would somehow lead to a democratic transition.”
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Credit: Associated Press