Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are set to make their first court appearance on Monday. The noontime hearing will be before Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, according to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Latin American autocrat, 63, and his wife, 69, were extracted from their residence in a military complex in Caracas early Saturday morning after the U.S. launched airstrikes on the Venezuelan capital and neighboring areas. They arrived in New York on Saturday night and were brought to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where they will await facing federal charges related to cocaine importation and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an X post. The U.S. government accused Maduro of leading a drug trafficking operation in 2020, which the Venezuelan leader denied. In November, the U.S. declared Cartel of the Suns a foreign terrorist organization, bolstering its legal justifications for ousting Maduro.
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