US captures Venezuela’s leader and his wife in a stunning operation: Plans to prosecute them

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of the country in a stunning military operation early Saturday that plucked a sitting leader from office — the culmination of months of escalating Trump administration pressure on the oil-rich South American nation.

Maduro and his wife, taken overnight from their home on a military base, were aboard a U.S. warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges. The U.S. is now evaluating next steps for Venezuela, President Donald Trump said Saturday on Fox News.

“We’ll be involved in it very much,” he said. “We can’t take a chance in letting somebody else run and just take over what he left.”

The legal authority for the attack, which echoed the 1990 U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, was not immediately clear. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro, who last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Trump said the couple were aboard the U.S. warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York.

Early morning attack

Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital. Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.

The attack lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they’d seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, without giving a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured in Venezuela but he believed none were killed.

Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.

Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.

Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike, demanding proof of life for Maduro and his wife.

The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.

As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration. Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S.

Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.