EFE.- Lawyers for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro asked a U.S. court on Wednesday to dismiss the criminal case against him on sovereign immunity grounds, according to the digital court docket.
Maduro’s attorney, Barry Pollack, filed two motions with the court: one seeking dismissal of the entire indictment based on sovereign immunity and another, should the first motion fail, seeking dismissal of the narcoterrorism conspiracy charge alone.
U.S. prosecutors accuse Maduro of conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism, cocaine importation and possession of automatic weapons. He has remained in a New York detention facility, where the court is handling his case, since authorities captured him in Caracas on January 3.
In the first motion, Pollack argued that a U.S. court lacks jurisdiction to prosecute Maduro because he remains Venezuela’s “de facto head of state” and the conduct underlying the charges “consists of acts attributable to official duties” and the “powers of the State.”
“The Court would lack jurisdiction over Mr. Maduro if he were entitled either to status-based sovereign immunity as a head of state or to conduct-based sovereign immunity (…). He is entitled to both,” Pollack stated in the filing.
Pollack also asked the court to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” which would effectively prevent prosecutors from bringing the same charges again.
In the second motion, the attorney asked the court to dismiss the narcoterrorism charge, arguing that the court also lacks jurisdiction and that prosecutors failed to frame the charge under U.S. law properly.
The charge “purports to prosecute a foreign national” for “exclusively foreign conduct without adequately alleging the jurisdictional element”; it fails to establish his “intent to cause harm to the United States, its citizens, or its interests” and “falls outside Congress’s authority to regulate,” Pollack wrote.
Maduro had until Wednesday to raise his sovereign immunity claim under a deadline set by Judge Alvin Hellerstein for the defense to submit its arguments.
U.S. prosecutors have until October 2 to respond to the motions and will likely oppose them.
The court scheduled a hearing on these issues for November 17, ahead of the trial, which currently remains set for June 2027.
Last Sunday, the ousted president released photographs of himself from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, wearing gray pants and a gray sweatshirt while making a victory sign.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, filed a similar request seeking dismissal of the charges against her, arguing that she “shares” his sovereign immunity as Venezuela’s first lady.
Flores’ attorney, Mark Donnely, also cited other U.S. cases in which courts upheld immunity claims involving the wives of heads of state, including Imelda Marcos, Queen Rania of Jordan and Paloma Cordero de la Madrid.
