Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been charged with conspiring to commit torture, adding a new count to their existing US drug-trafficking and weapons case. The superseding indictment was unsealed in Manhattan federal court on 8 October 2026.
Prosecutors allege that American citizens held in Venezuelan custody were subjected to electric shocks, beatings and simulated drowning. In one case, a captor allegedly told a detainee he was alive because his US citizenship made him 'useful in a prisoner exchange with the United States.'
