Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was in a New York detention centre on Sunday after President Donald Trump ordered a US raid to capture the South American leader and take control of the country and its vast oil reserves.
As part of the dramatic operation early on Saturday that knocked out electricity in parts of Caracas and included strikes on military installations, US Special Forces seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and transported them via helicopter to a US Navy ship offshore before flying them to the US.
“We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump told a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
For months, his administration criticised Maduro, 63, alleging his involvement in shipping drugs to the US. It ramped up pressure with a massive military build-up in the Caribbean and a series of deadly missile attacks on alleged drug-running boats.
Maduro in New York
A plane carrying Maduro landed near New York City on Saturday night, and he was helicoptered to the city before being taken by a large convoy to the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn under a heavy police guard.
Images released by US authorities showed the leader handcuffed and blindfolded during the flight, and later being led down a hallway at the offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, where he was heard wishing a “happy New Year.”
Indicted on various federal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, Maduro expected to make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court on Monday, according to a Justice Department official.
It is unclear how Trump plans to oversee Venezuela. US forces have no control over the country, and Maduro’s government appears not only to still be in charge but to have no appetite for cooperating with Washington. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, appeared on Venezuelan television on Saturday afternoon with other top officials to decry what she called a kidnapping.
We demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores,” Rodriguez said, calling Maduro “the only president of Venezuela.” A Venezuelan court ordered Rodriguez to assume the position of interim president.
Trump has also indicated US troops could be deployed in Venezuela, saying Washington is “not afraid of boots on the ground.”
One aspect that became clearer was Trump’s interest in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies … go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,” he said.
“We’ll be selling large amounts of oil.”
