FILE – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores wave after his swearing-in ceremony for a 3rd time period on the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 10, 2025.
Ariana Cubillos/AP
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Ariana Cubillos/AP
Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife requested a choose on Wednesday to dismiss the drug trafficking indictment towards them on the grounds that they’ve immunity because the chief and first woman of a overseas nation.
In papers filed in Manhattan federal courtroom, legal professionals for Maduro stated a choose was required by regulation to reject the indictment as a result of it can’t be introduced towards a overseas chief.
“No American court has ever presided over the criminal trial of a foreign leader who was recognized by their own country as the sitting head of state at the time the charges were brought,” the legal professionals wrote. “That is not an accident of history. It reflects a rule older than the common law: heads of state are exempt from the criminal process of any national court but their own.”
Maduro and his wife are scheduled to go on trial on drug trafficking charges subsequent June 1. Judge Alvin Ok. Hellerstein has set oral arguments for Nov. 17 on motions to dismiss the indictment.
Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail since U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid in early January and introduced them to New York.
In separate papers filed Wednesday, legal professionals for Flores stated she too has immunity from U.S. prosecution on sovereign immunity grounds.
“It is an attribute of Venezuela’s sovereignty, and only Venezuela may surrender it,” her legal professionals wrote.
Maduro’s legal professionals stated that even when Maduro weren’t entitled to sovereign immunity as the top of state, the case towards him should be dismissed as a result of he’s additionally entitled to conduct-based sovereign immunity.
Meanwhile, the legal professionals argued, Maduro “vehemently denies the allegations against him.”
“If this case were to proceed to trial, it would be apparent that he has been falsely accused,” they stated.
Both have pleaded not responsible in a prison case first brought six years in the past towards quite a few alleged co-conspirators. They face potential life jail sentences if a jury agrees that they have been a part of a conspiracy to ship cocaine into the U.S.
Federal prosecutors are scheduled to file a response to the arguments later this month.
President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid to seize Maduro as a “surgical law enforcement operation.” Maduro has known as himself a prisoner of conflict and his seize a kidnapping.
U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to transfer hundreds of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by colluding with Venezuelan regulation enforcement to assist drug kingpins.