U.S. Prosecutors Add Torture Charges Against Venezuela's Maduro in New Indictment

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed a new indictment on Thursday accusing Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan president held in a Brooklyn jail since January, and his wife, Cilia Flores, of conspiring to torture detainees, including American citizens, during his years in power. The superseding indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York adds a single count of conspiracy to commit torture, raising the total number of charges against the couple from four to five and layering a human-rights case on top of the narco-terrorism and weapons charges that have held them in federal custody for nine months.

The filing is the most serious escalation in the prosecution since Maduro and Flores were seized from their Caracas home in an overnight U.S. military raid on January 3 and flown to New York, where they have been held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the couple had "engaged in a conspiracy to commit torture, including the torture of United States citizens," according to reporting on the announcement.

"This is the epitome of corruption."

That assessment, attributed to McDonald, was echoed by FBI Director Kash Patel, who said Maduro is "now charged by superseding indictment with one count of Conspiracy to Commit Torture" and that the former president and his "regime will answer for their crimes."

Nine Victims, A Decade of Alleged Abuse

The 30-page indictment identifies nine alleged victims by code name or description, three of them Americans, though prosecutors say thousands more were threatened, detained or abused over more than a decade. The document names one American victim directly: Matthew Heath, a Marine veteran arrested at a Venezuelan military checkpoint in September 2020, who says he was waterboarded, electrocuted, drugged and threatened with sexual assault during nearly two years in custody before his release in an October 2022 prisoner swap. He attempted suicide while detained, according to the Associated Press account carried by The Spokesman-Review.

Two other Americans appear in the indictment only by number. Victim-8 was detained in August 2023 while visiting family in Venezuela and allegedly left with a serious back injury after being shocked; Victim-9 was detained in January 2025, allegedly beaten and permanently injured in one eye, and was released in January 2026, around the time of Maduro's capture. The indictment also describes the 2017 arrest of six American oil executives, often called the Citgo Six, who were held until October 2022, and alleges a senior Venezuelan official privately described their detention as leverage against Washington.

Non-American victims described in the filing include a military officer allegedly tortured for two days at a camp run by Colombia's FARC guerrillas in 2013; a law enforcement officer accused of stealing drug proceeds; a political opponent allegedly beaten and deprived of sleep; and a detainee allegedly abused following a 2018 drone attack on Maduro. Alleged methods listed in the indictment include electric shocks, simulated drowning, beatings with a shovel or rifle butt, suspension by the hands and feet, forced injections that caused seizures, and threats against victims' families, including children. Prosecutors allege Maduro personally received updates on specific prisoners and, in one instance in 2014, used a hand gesture to tell security officials to "squeeze them harder."

From a 2020 Drug Case to a Human-Rights Charge

The torture count builds on a prosecution that began long before Maduro's capture. A federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York first indicted him in March 2020, and the case was revived and expanded in a superseding indictment unsealed the day U.S. forces took him into custody. That document, which named Flores and four other Venezuelan officials alongside Maduro, centered on allegations that he partnered with Colombia's FARC, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Tren de Aragua gang to move thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States. Niño Guerrero, the Tren de Aragua leader named as a co-defendant, was killed in a U.S.-backed strike in June; Diosdado Cabello, Maduro's longtime deputy, remains a fugitive.

Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the drug and weapons charges in January and have since argued, through attorney Barry Pollack, that they are entitled to head-of-state immunity and that the military operation that captured them amounted to an unlawful kidnapping. A federal judge has not yet ruled on their motion to dismiss. Pollack told reporters Thursday that Maduro denies the new torture allegations as well and "looks forward to his day in court," according to NBC News. The Trump administration has defended the January raid as a "surgical law enforcement operation" built on the standing federal indictment rather than a military strike on a foreign government.

A Couple Still Fighting Over Bail, and a Case Reaching Beyond Them

The new charge arrived the same week Flores, 69, asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to release her from the Brooklyn jail to house arrest on medical grounds. Her lawyers say she has lost 25 pounds in custody, suffered a possible minor heart attack in July and may need heart surgery, and that she sustained permanent scarring after being "thrown against a wall or dresser" during the raid that captured her and her husband. Prosecutors are opposing release, arguing she poses "an extreme risk of flight and danger to the public." No ruling on either the bail request or the torture arraignment had been announced as of Thursday evening.

The case is also widening beyond the criminal docket. In July, a federal judge in Miami issued a $314 million default judgment against Maduro and several co-defendants in a related civil suit brought by Americans who alleged they were tortured in Venezuelan custody, a sign that the same allegations are being pressed on multiple legal fronts. In Caracas, Maduro's former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has led the government since his capture and has deepened cooperation with Washington; a former minister in Maduro's government, Alex Saab, pleaded guilty last month to money laundering and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators, a development prosecutors may look to as they build out the torture case against Maduro's inner circle.

What Happens Next

Maduro and Flores remain jointly charged on all five counts and face a mandatory minimum of decades in prison if convicted at trial, which Hellerstein has scheduled to begin June 1, 2027. Prosecutors have also included forfeiture provisions that would let the government seize assets tied to the alleged torture conspiracy if the couple is convicted. A further hearing in the case is expected in the coming weeks, and defense lawyers are expected to challenge both the new charge and the government's underlying authority to prosecute a sitting head of state captured on foreign soil. For the families of the alleged American victims named or coded in Thursday's filing, the indictment marks the first time the U.S. government has formally tied Maduro by name to specific, dated instances of abuse rather than the broader corruption and trafficking allegations that have defined the case since 2020.