US Unseals Torture Charges Against Maduro and Cilia Flores; Judge Denies Flores Bail

Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday widened their case against Nicolas Maduro, unsealing a superseding indictment that accuses the ousted Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, of running a system of torture against political opponents and detainees. Hours later, the judge overseeing the case refused to release Flores from jail ahead of trial.

What the new indictment alleges

The filing in Manhattan federal court charges Maduro with one count of conspiracy to commit torture. Flores faces the same torture conspiracy count plus a separate narcoterrorism charge. These are layered on top of the drug-trafficking and narcoterrorism case the couple has been fighting since US forces captured them in Caracas in January and flew them to New York.

Prosecutors allege that after Maduro took power in 2013 he authorised torture against specific individuals and oversaw a wider apparatus that used military detention and violence to crush the opposition. Flores is accused of helping to build that system. The methods listed in the indictment include electric shocks, asphyxiation, severe beatings, sexual violence, forced nudity, starvation, long stretches of isolation, punishment cells and threats against prisoners' families.

American detainees at the centre

A notable feature of the new charges is the focus on US citizens. FBI Director Kash Patel said the government had subjected more than a dozen Americans to torture while they were in Venezuelan custody. The indictment describes several of them by number rather than name.

One American, visiting relatives in Venezuela, was allegedly attacked so badly that he needed a long hospital stay, then shocked and restrained while being moved to prison. According to prosecutors, a guard told him he was being kept alive only because he might be useful in a prisoner swap with Washington. Another US citizen was allegedly beaten repeatedly over two days after the disputed 2024 presidential election, leaving him with a permanent eye injury. He was freed in mid-January 2026, about two weeks after Maduro was removed, and the indictment says released Americans were warned not to speak about their treatment.

Flores stays in jail

Maduro did not appear in court on Thursday, but Flores did, on a separate bail application. Her lawyers argued that she needs a medical procedure and cannot recover properly in a jail cell, proposing house arrest under private security instead. Prosecutors opposed the request, calling her a serious flight risk and saying witnesses who were present would testify about the abuse.

US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein sided with the government, saying the allegations were serious and that the conditions for release were not met.

What happens next

Both defendants will be arraigned on the new counts at a later date. They have already pleaded not guilty to the original charges and maintain their innocence. Maduro's legal team argued in a filing last month that he is immune from prosecution as the former head of a sovereign state, a question the court has yet to settle. Separately, the International Criminal Court has spent years examining allegations of crimes against humanity linked to his government's crackdown on dissent, which he has always denied.

The torture counts raise the stakes of the US case considerably. They shift it from a narcotics prosecution towards one centred on alleged human-rights abuses, with American victims who could be called to testify.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.