The government has accused former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife of personally approving the torture of political prisoners — including Americans — as part of a conspiracy to punish political opposition, silence dissent and preserve their political power.
An updated indictment unsealed Thursday with a charge of conspiracy to commit torture sharply raises the stakes in the ongoing prosecution in Manhattan federal court of Maduro, who already faced multiple offenses including conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
Prosecutors, over 10 of the indictment’s 30 pages, described how Maduro employed his vast network of resources — including the feared General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, the DGCIM, and the leftist narco paramilitary Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC.
Prosecutors say his jailed co-defendant and wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, a former high-ranking government official, also took part, once approving the kidnapping and torture of a half dozen soldiers in an attempt to root out dissention among the military ranks.
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The indictment details the experiences of nine unnamed victims who were arrested in relation to efforts to quell protests or other political issues and then beaten, given electric shocks, deprived of food and water. It describes how Maduro would “decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether an individual who had been abused would be released or subjected to criminal prosecution.”
If they refused to talk, he “would ask questions including, ‘What can we do to make them talk?’” — sometimes making “suggestions for particular torture techniques, saying ‘do not let them sleep,’ or ‘pour water on them,’ at times laughing after hearing about the abuse of prisoners,” the indictment says.
The indictment describes the experiences of one American prisoner who was taken to Boleíta Norte prison, where he was given electroshocks and guards injected him with a mysterious substance that gave him seizures — all while accusing him of being part of a grand American conspiracy to kill Maduro.
The indictment also tells the story of another unidentified American who was visiting his family in August 2023 when he was allegedly kidnapped by DGCIM, beaten so hard from behind that he required hospital treatment, and at one point had a pistol shoved into his mouth and told to “say goodbye to everyone he knew.”
Guards at Boleíta Norte prison later electrocuted his testicles — and told him the only reason he remained alive was for a future prisoner swap with the United States, the indictment says.
Many of the torture scenes described in the superseding indictment relate to Maduro’s desperate attempts to maintain political control in Venezuela during the years when his regime struggled to remain in power. That includes a 2017 constitutional crisis when the Maduro loyalists in the nation’s supreme court took over the country’s legislature and 2024 sham presidential election that was widely censured around the globe.
But it also describes the depths of the suffering experienced by the Venezuelan people, thousands of whom have fled to neighboring countries and the United States.
Prosecutors in one segment of the indictment describe what played out behind the scenes as Maduro’s regime tried to hunt down a law enforcement officer who “had become a famous opponent of the regime,” since he one time flew a stolen helicopter around Caracas and another time stole weapons from a military command station.
That matches the actions of Óscar Alberto Pérez, a state police investigator who briefly became a hero when he went rogue in 2017 by stealing a helicopter, dropping nonlethal stun grenades on the Supreme Tribunal of Justice building, and documented his acts of resistance on social media.
Prosecutors say in the indictment that one of the law enforcement officer’s friends was arrested on January 4, 2018, by government security forces in a futile attempt to locate the renegade cop. A high-ranking Venezuelan official was physically present when the man was tortured for days and had his testicles electrocuted while interrogators threatened to kill his child, the indictment says.
In another instance, prosecutors in the indictment say Maduro personally ordered the kidnapping and torture of a Venezuelan military officer who was under suspicion of meeting with a former Venezuelan government official who’d joined the political opposition.
The man was tortured by the DGCIM: forced to experience simulated drowning 30 times, beaten and subjected to live wire electrocutions 20 times — only to experience further torture when he was taken to a FARC camp in rural neighboring Colombia. Maduro allegedly viewed a video recording of the man’s forced false confession, the indictment says.
Prosecutors also alleged that in 2022 Maduro summoned several judges to his presidential palace to bribe them with a $1,000 monthly stipend to issue rulings favorable to his administration. But when one judge refused secret orders to yank opposition political opponents from appearing on electoral ballots, her family members were “arrested and tortured” by the DGCIM, the indictment says.
The indictment details how one family member was forced to drink latrine water, subjected to tear gas in their jail cell and subjected to extreme conditions inside a freezing room with blaring noise where bright lights were kept on at all times — until the judge finally relented.
Maduro and his wife, who were taken from their official home in Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026, during an American military operation, previously pleaded not guilty of the narcotics charges and have questioned the U.S. government’s legal ability to abduct and criminally charge a foreign head of state.
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