Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has claimed that his health and spirits are good while being held in a US jail, his son said in a recorded message.
Maduro, who is in custody along with his wife Cilia Flores and facing trial in the United States, conveyed his condition through his son, lawmaker Nicolás Maduro Guerra, several media outlets reported, quoting AFP.
In the video shared by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela party, Guerra relayed his father’s words: “We are doing well. We are fighters.”
A pre‑dawn operation carried out by US forces in Venezuela on 3 January resulted in the capture of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Forty‑eight hours later, Maduro was brought before a federal court in New York City, where he pleaded not guilty to charges related to drugs, firearms, and narco‑terrorism.
In the biggest US intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, special forces swooped into Caracas on helicopters at the weekend to smash through Maduro’s security cordon and nab him at the door of a safe room on 3 January.
Maduro and his also-captured wife Cilia Flores were later taken by armed guards from a Brooklyn detention centre to a helicopter that whisked them to the Manhattan federal court where they faced a midday hearing.
Maduro is accused of overseeing a cocaine-trafficking network that partnered with violent groups including Mexico’s Sinaloa and Zetas cartels, Colombian FARC rebels and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang. Maduro, 63, has long denied the allegations, saying they were a mask for imperialist designs on Venezuela’s oil.
Senior officials from his 13-year-old government remain in charge of the South American oil producer of 30 million people, first spitting defiance then pivoting to possible cooperation with the US President Donald Trump administration.
Though denouncing Maduro as a dictator and drug kingpin who flooded the US with cocaine, Trump has made no bones about wanting to share in Venezuela’s oil riches.
Trump has threatened another strike if Venezuela does not cooperate with opening its oil industry and stopping drugs. Trump also threatened Colombia and Mexico and said Cuba’s communist government “looks like it’s ready to fall”.
