Prosecutors have added an additional charge of torture against former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Maduro and Cilia Flores were charged in a superseding indictment, unsealed on Oct. 8, with torturing political opponents and Americans.
According to the indictment, Maduro and Flores “created and maintained a violent system of repression.” Between 1999 and 2025, thousands of Venezuelans were harassed, threatened, arrested, prosecuted, assaulted, tortured, or killed by Maduro and other regime officials.
After assuming the presidency in 2013, Maduro ordered the arrest of a Venezuelan military officer he accused of planning a coup, according to prosecutors.
Military counterintelligence officials detained the individual, who is only identified in the indictment as “Victim-2,” and interrogated and questioned the person over about two days. The officials shocked the individual using a live electric wire approximately 20 times.
According to prosecutors, the officials struck the individual on his legs, back, and head with their fists, a belt, and what appeared to be a pipe. They forced the person to lie on a mattress containing just metal springs and hung the individual from his hands and feet for several minutes at a time, causing him to lose consciousness.
The military counterintelligence officials threatened to kill the person, according to the indictment. The person was ultimately spared as he was forced to record a false confession that he was planning a coup against Maduro. The individual was released near the Colombia–Venezuela border.
The person was transported to a camp in Colombia near the border with Venezuela, where the person was held in “inhumane conditions,” according to prosecutors.
Nine years later, Venezuela detained a U.S. citizen while entering the country and accused the individual of conspiring to assassinate Maduro. The person was tortured by military counterintelligence officers, according to prosecutors.
The torture included electric shocks to the individual’s arms, legs, and genitals; asphyxiation; beatings; deprivation of food and water; and forced injections of a substance that caused the person to experience seizures, according to the indictment. Prosecutors only identified the person as “Victim-7.”
After spending about 8 1/2 months behind bars, the individual was released and returned to the United States, according to the indictment.
In August 2023, an American citizen, only identified in the indictment as “Victim-8,” was detained by military counterintelligence officials while traveling to Venezuela. The officers attacked the individual from behind, severely injuring his back. The person was hospitalized before being transported to a prison.
On the way to the prison, officers put a gun in the individual’s mouth and told him “to say goodbye to everyone he knew,” according to prosecutors. His testicles were electrocuted, and a pressure device was put on his ankles, causing him to faint several times during the transport, they said.
In prison, the person was subjected to beatings and other abuses, according to the indictment. The individual was told that the only reason he was alive was that he was a U.S. citizen and therefore could be part of a prisoner exchange with the United States.
In January 2025, another U.S. citizen was arrested by military counterintelligence officials who came to his home looking for someone else, according to prosecutors. Officers allegedly placed him in the basement of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, handcuffed him behind his back, and placed a hood over his head. Officers frequently beat him with their fists on the face, head, and stomach, the indictment states. The individual, only identified in the indictment as “Victim-9,” suffered a permanent injury to his eye because of the beatings.
The U.S. citizen was released a year later and, along with other Americans, was threatened by an unnamed Venezuelan official, who allegedly told them that they were not to say that they had been hurt by the Venezuelan government.
Maduro and his wife were captured in a surprise military operation by the United States in January and charged with narcoterrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and weapons offenses. Both have pleaded not guilty.
During his arraignment in January, Maduro said that he is “a decent man” and called his capture a “kidnapping,” making him a “prisoner of war.”
Flores has yet to respond to her capture.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Maduro and Flores’s attorneys, Barry Pollack and Mark Donnelly, respectively, for comment on the superseding indictment.
