Maduro says ‘I was captured’ as he pleads not guilty to drug trafficking charges

A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty on Monday to the federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom reporter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country.”

The courtroom appearance, Maduro’s first since he and his wife were seized from their home in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicks off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. The criminal case in Manhattan is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro was led into court along with his co-defendant wife just before noon for the brief legal proceeding. Both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

The couple was transported to the Manhattan courthouse under armed guard early Monday from the Brooklyn jail where they’ve been detained since arriving in the U.S. on Saturday. (AP News)