By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) – Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro returns to a Manhattan court on Thursday where he will argue that drug trafficking charges against him should be thrown out more than two months after he and his wife were captured in a surprise U.S. military raid in Caracas.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been embroiled in a dispute over U.S. sanctions that prevent the Venezuelan government from paying for the couple’s legal defense.
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have each pleaded not guilty to charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and are jailed in Brooklyn pending trial.
They have asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the charges, saying their inability to rely on Venezuelan public funds is interfering with their right to have a lawyer of their choosing under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Their lawyers have said Maduro and Flores cannot afford to pay their defense fees on their own.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, who represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said he wants to withdraw from the case if Hellerstein doesn’t dismiss the charges and the Venezuelan government cannot pay his fees. It was unclear how much Pollack is charging Maduro for his services. Pollack did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. special forces captured Maduro and Flores in a surprise January 3 raid on their Caracas residence and flew them to New York to face drug trafficking charges, an operation detailed in a Reuters examination of the covert mission and its geopolitical fallout.
The hearing was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). For their previous court appearance in January, a helicopter whisked them from the jail into Manhattan.
Maduro and his wife, who will also be in court, say that under Venezuelan law and custom, the government pays the expenses of the president and first lady.
Prosecutors argue that because the U.S. has not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president since 2019, he and Flores should not expect the U.S. government to allow Venezuela to pay their legal fees. The prosecutors say Maduro and Flores can be assigned public defenders if they cannot afford their own lawyers.
Maduro faces four felony charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy, which criminalizes drug trafficking to help finance activities the United States considers terrorism. The statute has rarely been tested at trial, and two of three trial convictions have been overturned over issues stemming from witness credibility, a Reuters analysis of court records found.
During his first term in the White House, President Donald Trump ramped up sanctions on Venezuela over allegations that Maduro’s government was corrupt and undermining democratic institutions. Washington called Maduro’s 2018 reelection fraudulent.
Maduro dismissed those accusations, along with allegations of his participation in drug trafficking, as pretextual justifications for what he called a U.S. desire to seize control of the South American OPEC nation’s vast oil reserves.
Relations between Caracas and Washington have improved since Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, became interim president after his capture.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)
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