Nicolas Maduro, former president of Venezuela, made his first court appearance in New York City after his capture by US forces in Caracas on 3 January.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared in handcuffs and leg shackles before a judge. They are due to stand trial for charges including narcoterrorism. Both entered not guilty pleas.
The BBC’s Madeline Halpert was inside the courtroom as the former president addressed the judge.
The US seizing of Venezuela’s leader has faced strong criticism from both America’s friends and foes at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Many member states agreed with the US that Nicolás Maduro had been an illegitimate and repressive leader.
But many also condemned the US military action as a breach of international law and the UN Charter, and they demanded a democratic transition that reflected the will of the Venezuelan people.
Among US allies, France was by far the most outspoken. The deputy ambassador, Jay Dharmadhikari, said Maduro’s taking by the US runs “counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of the non-use of force”.
He told the Council: “The proliferation of violations of the Charter of the UN and the violations of international law by states vested with responsibility as permanent members of Security Council chips away at the very foundation of the international order, contravening the principles of the charter, including the principle of respect for independence and territorial integrity of states, undermines the foundation of the UN and weakens international peace and security.”
The deputy UN ambassador for Denmark, Sandra Jensen Landi, voiced her country’s “deep concern” at the evolving situation and said: “These developments constitute a dangerous precedent. International law and the UN Charter… must be respected.”
Both these statements – by France and Denmark – represent a significant stiffening of European criticism of the seizing of Maduro after some initial equivocation by many EU members. In contrast, both UK and Greek diplomats at the UN did not condemn the US military operation.
The ambassador for Panama, Eloy Alfaro de Alba, expressed concern about US plans to work with the existing regime, without involving the opposition or holding fresh elections.
He told the Council: “Any attempt to establish a permanent government headed by a figure from the repressive apparatus such as Delcy Rodriguez would constitute continuity of the system and not a genuine transition.”
Colombia’s ambassador Leonor Zalabata Torres said there is no justification for the unilateral use of force to commit an act of aggression: “Such actions constitute a serious violation of international law and the UN Charter.”
Russia’s ambassador, Vassili Nebenzia, accused the US of “international banditry” and “neo-colonialism and imperialism”.
He said there was no justification for “US domination by force” and accused US allies of hypocrisy and double standards for failing to criticise Trump.
China’s Chargé d’Affaires, Sun Lei, said Beijing was “deeply shocked and strongly condemned” what he called the “unilateral, illegal and bullying acts of the US”.
In a statement read out on his behalf, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said he remained “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected” during the US action: “The power of the law must prevail.”
By contrast, the acting UK ambassador, James Kariuki, gave a very brief statement, saying merely the UK wanted to see a “safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people”.
He added, without being specific, that the UK “reaffirms its commitment to international law and the principles enshrined in the charter of the UN”. Greece’s deputy ambassador, Ioannis Stamatekos, also failed to condemn Trump’s seizure of Maduro, calling instead for “dialogue and diplomacy” to resolve the crisis.
For the US, UN ambassador Mike Waltz said the capture of Maduro was a law-enforcement operation against an illegitimate leader responsible for both drug trafficking and terrorism.
“You can’t turn Venezuela into the operating hub for Iran, for Hezbollah, for gangs, for the Cuban intelligence agents and other malign actors that control that country,” Waltz told the Council. “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the US.”
For many European countries, the seizing of Maduro has posed a difficult diplomatic dilemma.
Some have been torn between defending fundamental principles of the UN charter that countries should not breach each other’s sovereignty, or making a pragmatic, real politik decision not to anger the US on whose support and security they rely, especially for Ukraine
Hence UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to say if the US attack on Venezuela was a breach of international law. He said merely that “international law is the framework, is the anchor or the benchmark against which we judge the actions of all other governments. And it is, of course, for the US to justify the action that it has taken”.
Likewise, the EU issued its own statement, saying that “under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be upheld” without saying whether that applied in this case.
The EU considered Maduro illegitimate and his drug trafficking a “significant security threat worldwide” but the bloc said nothing about Trump’s declaration that the US will now “run” the country.
The French and Danish criticism now places them alongside Spain, which had been the only European country to voice concerns, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying his government would “not recognise an intervention that violates international law and pushes the region toward a horizon of uncertainty and belligerence”.
The difficulty for other European leaders, fearful of upsetting Trump, is that they risk accusations of hypocrisy from other countries.
For years, European powers have argued Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should be opposed in part because it broke international rules about territorial integrity.
Many developing countries rejected that argument, citing western military adventurism from Vietnam to Iraq. They will now add Venezuela to that list.
The question is how Europe may respond in the longer term to America’s military operation in Venezuela. Will it provide a catalyst for the continent to take greater responsibility for its own security in the face of so much instability from what many see as an unreliable ally?
Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, certainly hopes so, saying on social media: “No-one will take seriously a weak and divided Europe: neither enemy nor ally. It is already clear now.
“We must finally believe in our own strength, we must continue to arm ourselves, we must stay united like never before. One for all, and all for one. Otherwise, we are finished.”
Getty ImagesOn Monday morning, a handcuffed, jumpsuit-clad Nicholas Maduro stepped off a military helicopter in New York City, flanked by armed federal agents.
The Venezuelan president had spent the night in a notorious federal jail in Brooklyn, before authorities transported him to a Manhattan courthouse to face criminal charges.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has said Maduro was brought to the US to “face justice”.
But international law experts question the legality of the Trump administration’s actions, and argue the US may have violated international statutes governing the use of force. Domestically, however, the US’s actions fall into a legal grey area that may still result in Maduro standing trial, regardless of the circumstances that brought him there.
The US maintains its actions were legally justified. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of “narco-terrorism” and enabling the transport of “thousands of tonnes” of cocaine to the US.
“All personnel involved acted professionally, decisively, and in strict accordance with US law and established protocols,” Bondi said in a statement.
Maduro has long denied US allegations that he oversees an illegal drug operation, and in court in New York on Monday he entered a plea of not guilty.
Although the charges are focused on drugs, the US prosecution of Maduro comes after years of criticism of his leadership of Venezuela from the wider international community.
In 2020, UN investigators said Maduro’s government had committed “egregious violations” amounting to crimes against humanity – and that the president and other top officials were implicated. The US and some of its allies have also accused Maduro of rigging elections, and did not recognise him as the legitimate president.
Maduro’s alleged links to drugs cartels are the focus of this legal case, yet the US methods in putting him before a US judge to answer these charges are also under scrutiny.
Conducting a military operation in Venezuela and whisking Maduro out of the country under the cover of darkness was “completely illegal under international law,” said Luke Moffett, a professor at the Queen’s University Belfast School of Law.
Professor Moffett and other experts pointed to a host of issues raised by the US operation.
The United Nations Charter prohibits members from threatening or using force against other states. It allows for “self-defence if an armed attack occurs” but that threat must be imminent, Prof Moffett said. The other exception occurs when the UN Security Council approves such an action, which the US did not obtain before it took action in Venezuela.
International law would consider the drug-trafficking offences the US alleges against Maduro to be a law enforcement matter, experts say, not a violent attack that might justify one country to take military action against another.
In public statements, the Trump administration has characterised the operation as, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “basically a law enforcement function”, rather than an act of war or a military campaign.
Maduro has been under indictment on drug trafficking charges in the US since 2020; the justice department has now issued a superseding – or revised – indictment against the Venezuelan leader. The Trump administration essentially says it is now enforcing it.
“The mission was conducted to support an ongoing criminal prosecution tied to large-scale narcotics trafficking and related offenses that have fuelled violence, destabilised the region, and contributed directly to the drug crisis claiming American lives,” Bondi said in her statement.
But since the operation, several legal experts have said the US broke international law by taking Maduro out of Venezuela on its own.
“A country cannot go into another foreign country and arrest people,” said Milena Sterio, an expert on international criminal law at Cleveland State University College of Law. “If the US wants to arrest someone in another country, the proper way to do that is extradition.”
Even if an individual faces indictment in America, “The US has no right to go around the wold enforcing the arrest warrant in the territory of other sovereign states,” she said.
Maduro’s lawyers in court in Manhattan on Monday said they would challenge the legality of the US operation which took him from Caracas to New York.
There’s also a long-running legal debate about whether presidents must follow the UN Charter. The US Constitution considers treaties the country enters to be the “supreme law of the land”.
But there’s a clear historic example of a presidential administration arguing it did not have to comply with the charter.
In 1989, the George HW Bush administration removed Panama’s military leader Manuel Noriega and brought him to the US to face drug trafficking charges.
An internal Justice Department memo from the time argued that the president had the legal authority to order the FBI to arrest individuals who violated US law, “even if those actions contravene customary international law” – including the UN Charter.
Getty ImagesThe author of that memo, William Barr, became the US attorney general during Trump’s first term, and brought the initial 2020 indictment against Maduro.
However, the memo’s reasoning later came under criticism from legal scholars. US courts have not explicitly weighed in on the matter.
In the US, the question of whether this operation broke any domestic laws is complicated.
The US Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but puts the president in charge of the armed forces.
A Nixon-era law called the War Powers Resolution places restrictions on the president’s ability to use military force. It requires the president to consult Congress before committing US troops abroad “in every possible instance,” and notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces.
The Trump administration did not give Congress a heads up before the action in Venezuela “because it endangers the mission,” Rubio said on Saturday.
However, several presidents have tested the limits of their powers to order military actions without congressional approval, and Trump has been carrying out military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean for months despite bipartisan criticism.
US federals courts now have jurisdiction over Maduro, regardless of how he arrived.
Maduro could argue that the US violated international laws when it forcibly brought him to New York. But extensive legal precedent suggests a trial against Maduro would go forward, Prof Sterio said.
“Our courts have long recognised that for a defendant, even if they are kidnapped or abducted or forcibly brought to the US, that is not grounds for tossing out the case,” she said.
